


Released from the Shadows

by sunshineflying



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Accidents, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Blood and Injury, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Head Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-07
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-04-19 21:48:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 35,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14246436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunshineflying/pseuds/sunshineflying
Summary: Years after the end of The Last Jedi, Ben and Rey have found the future they both envisioned when their hands touched. But when out on a romantic flight to the most beautiful corner of the galaxy, a meteor strikes their ship and their lives are changed forever.A Star Wars AU of the Vow, canon divergent from the end of The Last Jedi. Spoilers abound for episodes XII and XIII.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my Reylo fam who supported me with this fic!! Special thanks to Julia[Julia](http://carrie-reylo.tumblr.com/) for giving this a beta read for me, and to [Kate](http://vvhenan.tumblr.com/) for creating the aesthetic for this fic. You two are gems and I'm lucky to have you.
> 
> Title for the fic from Lowland Hum's song Albatross.

**Before**

Rey stares in awe out the window, eyes wide as she takes in the sight of the vast expanse of space surrounding them. She loves these moments, when she and Ben soar through space with no destination, no reason - just exploring, seeking out the most beautiful phenomena possible. Stars around them glow purple and white and blue, hotter than any sun, illuminating their path.

Ben can’t take his eyes off of Rey, the way the colors dance on her expression, mingling with her freckles, dotting her face. She looks beautiful, as always. He still doesn’t believe they’ve reached this point - together, at last. On the same side, on the same page.

 _Together_.

“It’s beautiful,” she says reverently, her eyes sparkling with the reflection of the stars.

Blindly, she reaches over, settling only once he takes her hand in his own. He still wears his black robes, the leather gloves covering his palms most of the time. Rey loves touching his skin, seeing him beneath the layers, but accepts who he is in front of the galaxy, in front of the people he sees on a daily basis. Rey’s people. His mother’s people. The people he doesn’t necessarily support, but understands he must side with in order for he and Rey to get the future they want.

“Yes,” Ben agrees after a moment. His voice is curt, still. Warm. “It is.”

He gazes out the window, and then turns back to Rey. Squeezing her hand gently, he pulls her attention away from the stars sparkling around them. When their eyes meet, her heart races in her chest with a happiness she never imagined she could feel. “You know… we’re all alone,” she says, a hint of playfulness in her eyes.

It’s common sense of course; they’d left in the ship, alone. But her words imply something much deeper, and it makes Ben’s palms sweat. He takes a deep breath and nods, watching as Rey’s face leans closer to his own.

“We are,” he agrees, his voice deep and husky.

Rey smirks, bumping her nose against Ben’s. He steals a soft kiss from her, reveling in it, treating it like the last he’ll ever get. That’s always how he takes Rey’s kisses - like this goodness, this light she illuminates within him could be gone at any second. “I have an idea,” she says with a grin.

Ben watches as Rey stands, her eyes never leaving his. She smiles at him and turns to climb into his lap, knees bumping against his thighs. With her arms draped around his shoulders, Rey presses her lips to his once more. This time it’s heated, a little desperate. Ben breathes against her mouth, savoring Rey’s touch. His hands rest on her hips, sliding up and down her sides, one hand drifting around to dance along her spine. She shivers under his touch and presses impossibly closer, hungry for more.

They don’t see the meteor coming.

They certainly don’t expect the crash.

 

**After**

A blinking red light on one of the command boards clue them into the fact that something was wrong.

Leia was on high alert and Poe was sent out on a rescue mission immediately. (Ben didn’t need to know that Leia could track all ships owned by the Resistance, that she knew Ben took Rey to all the most beautiful corners of the galaxy when he thought she wasn’t looking.)

Poe brings Finn and Snap and Jess and together they rescue both Rey and Ben from the rubble hurtling through space, that deep endless nothingness threatening to suffocate them, to kill them in the wreckage.

Jess and Finn immediately get Rey and Ben laid down, start tending to their wounds. The scar on Ben’s face from his first lightsaber battle with Rey is still there, fading, but noticeable. He has another gash on his forehead now, drifting up into his hairline, painting his raven hair a sickening crimson that Jess can see shining under the fluorescent lighting of the ship. It twists her stomach painfully. Jess is careful not to hurt him as she gives him a particularly strong dose of a sedative to prevent him from hurting everyone in panic when he wakes before digging around for some bacta patches.

Finn gingerly tends to Rey’s wounds, putting a few patches on her cuts. He dabs a cloth at her cheek where it split open from the glass flying at their faces. Ben took the brunt of the impact, but Rey was clearly hurt as well. They’re both lucky to be alive, lucky Leia keeps track of her people.

When they return to the Resistance base, it’s chaos as more specially trained medics take over, leading Rey and Ben both to the med bay, barking out commands to find this supply or that medication. The medics care for both without question, Rey of course, but also Ben - Kylo Ren, the man who threatened their very existence for the longest time.

It feels backwards, Poe thinks, as he watches them cart the couple away. He stands a little closer to Finn, thankful that when they go out together, they at least have the sensibility to avoid meteor fields.

Finn stands at Poe’s side and sighs heavily. “I hope she’s okay.”

“For the General’s sake, I hope they’re _both_ okay,” Poe replies.

 

**Before**

Rey stands, looking into what was once the bridge of the tiny little Resistance dugout on Crait. She stands, transfixed, watching the man before her - weighing her options. Kylo Ren kneels, clutching something in his hands, something gold and worn that Rey can’t identify.

They’d seen something of each other’s futures when their hands touched. Rey knew that one day, Ben would come back, that he could overcome the monster known as Kylo Ren that Snoke had planted in his head, that he’d join Rey.

One day, they would be together.

She saw it.

It hadn’t happened in that throne room, after defeating the Praetorian Guards. That wasn’t the right moment. Kylo had asked her to join him with the wrong ideas in mind. She would not go to the Dark side.

But now - something about the moment, the stillness, the look in his eyes - it felt more _right_ . Rey felt a settling feeling in her bones, something she couldn’t identify, didn’t know how to label. Like the words _it’s time_ were echoing in her head, begging her to listen.

His eyes said everything - he felt broken, destroyed, bested by the very man he’d hoped to take down once and for all. Because Luke Skywalker had done just that to young Ben - he’d broken him, destroyed him - _betrayed him_. And then he’d come back and humiliated him in front of Hux and the rest of the First Order militants who fought in the Battle of Crait.

And now he felt Rey would do the very same - humiliate him and betray him when he’d trusted himself to open up to her, to share in their loneliness, their broken, bruised pasts. But she wasn’t going to hurt him with a lightsaber. No, she’d do it with that disappointed look in her eyes and the frown on her face - weapons far more lethal.

Rey glances over her shoulder, towards where the Millennium Falcon is filled with the last of the Resistance, all of them gathered in the communal area and living space - the ship still feeling pathetically empty even though it’s holding all the Resistance members who are left.

When she looks back at Kylo Ren, he’s watching her with a blank, calculated gaze. Very slowly, Rey holds out her hand.

Kylo looks down at his hand, his palm now empty, the gold thing gone. Where it went, Rey doesn’t know. By the way his expression changes to anger and frustration, neither does Kylo. “There are some good hiding spots on the Falcon,” Rey says, extending her hand out just a little further.

Rey can sense Kylo’s conflict, the endless barrage of _what ifs_ running through his brain. She gives him time, more than they have, before she gently adds, “I’m not asking you to turn.”

Her voice is tender; he can hardly hear it over the booming footsteps and shouting of the First Order officers outside the doorway, raiding what the Resistance may have left behind. “I just want to buy you some time so you can figure out what to do next - for yourself, not for them.”

Rey’s brow furrows ever so slightly, and she almost pleads with him to take the offer. If he’s ever going to get out of this hole he’s dug himself into, he needs to think clearly. He needs to get away from the First Order - away from the rest of the galaxy, even - and figure out who he really is.

He’s never had to be his own person before. Kylo Ren has always had someone there to tell him who to be, what to do, what to think. His parents, and then Luke, and then Snoke. It couldn’t have been good for him, all those years without independence.

Kylo stands, and walks nearer to Rey, but doesn’t take her hand. “You don’t know _half_ the hiding spaces on that ship,” he says curtly.

“Come out through the back,” Rey tells him, knowing nobody else from the First Order will be able to hear. “Come hide. We’ll get you to safety.”

General Hux stands by the broken down barricaded doors, watching as Kylo Ren stalks through the Resistance base. He’s leaving - defecting, undoubtedly - but Hux is too power hungry to care.

He lets Ren leave, satisfaction clear on his face.

With Ren gone, the _true_ Supreme Leader can finally take his rightful place.

When Kylo emerges from the back of the secret base, he looks around at the rocks lining the path between the cave and the Falcon. “Did you do this?” he asks, his stride strong and heavy as he blatantly trudges towards the ship he vowed to never set foot on again.

Rey nods. Kylo looks impressed, but now is not the time to talk about it. She gestures to the ship. “Where’s the best hiding place, then?”

Rey follows as he stalks easily around the ship, away from the entrance and any potential prying eyes, and climbs easily up around the landing gear. Somehow, he maneuvers his broad body through the space - a space she hadn’t expected him to fit through. A space she wouldn’t have even assumed _she_ could fit through.

Rey watches as he pushes against a piece of paneling just enough that it gives way - not broken, just swinging on some loose screws. “Rear cargo hold,” he explains. “Let me out when we get where we’re going.”

“But -” Rey wants to protest.

She hadn’t even known one could access the cargo hold that way.

“Nobody knows this ship better than I do, now,” Kylo replies. He schools his expression from pained back to one of neutral indifference. “This is the best place for me to be, if you meant what you said about getting me out of here.”

“I’ll bring you food,” Rey promises. “I don’t know when we’ll get where we’re going. I don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Away from the First Order,” Kylo says simply. “That’s all you need to do.”

Rey nods dutifully and looks at him one more time, noticing at how he looks rather at home on the Falcon, even if she’s sure he’d rather not be there again. Slowly, she helps him slide the paneling back into place before rushing onto the ship. Now, she makes it her mission to find as many reasons as she can to meander near the cockpit and the boarding ramp. Nobody can find Kylo Ren in the cargo hold.

Nobody can know that she gave him another chance.

\---

Leia senses her son on board, of course, and when they land, they’re herded right into the base and to a back room where nobody will find them. She won’t tell either of them where they are, just in case this is all a plot to gather intel for the First Order. Leia wants to have faith in her son, but she’s also in charge. She needs to think about the lives of the remaining Resistance members.

They’re lectured, of course - Rey, mostly - for putting the Resistance in danger. Ben comes to Rey’s defense with such ferocity that neither woman can truly believe it.

Leia wants to trust in her son, though. Desperately, she wants to believe that Rey is pulling the light to his surface, bringing back the boy she knows is in there.

So she lets Ben stay.

Right away, Leia barks orders to Rey, giving her things to do to draw suspicion away from their abrupt departure from the ship. Nobody can know Ben is there - for now, at least.

Leia leaves the room, leaving Rey standing halfway between Ben and the door, left to grapple for some sort of reaction to everything. It’s been an exhausting day from start to finish - battling the First Order, lifting all of those damned rocks, and now this.

She turns to look behind her, at Ben who stands solemnly, reduced to nothing but the clothes on his back and the lightsaber clipped to his belt. No mask, no anger in his eyes, no possessions at all.

Rey wants to say something but none of the words seem right. She doesn’t know how to begin to talk to Ben, because she has to remind herself that he hasn’t turned. This isn’t his surrender. This is his time to figure out what he needs to do next. Even if it means he disappears to the far reaches of the galaxy and she never looks into his dark, expressive, _beautiful_ eyes ever again.

“Thank you.”

Rey is startled by his proclamation, even if his voice is quieter than she’s ever heard before. He watches her with vulnerability, but is earnest and unwavering nonetheless.

She nods, just barely, and says, “You’re welcome.”

Very slowly, he takes a step towards her. She lowers her gaze as she takes a deep breath, stepping towards him, feeling his presence rather than seeing it now. When she looks up again, he’s close - so close she can feel his breath on her cheek, feel the heat coming from his body. “I should thank you, too,” she reminds him. “With - Snoke,” she adds awkwardly.

“You’re welcome,” he replies simply. He leaves off all the snark he wants to add about her leaving him to die in a burning room. He’d had to wake up to Hux, whose hand had been suspiciously close to his blaster when Kylo came to consciousness.

In a small burst of confidence, Rey reaches out, wrapping her arms around his waist and burying her face against his chest. He needs to know that she cares. That’s all she can think about. He needs to know that she has faith he will do the right thing for himself, even if it takes him a while to get to that point.

Rey doesn’t let go, can’t bring herself to step away. Not until he accepts that she isn’t going anywhere, that whatever it is they’re meant to do together - it’s not over. She relaxes into the embrace the moment his hands find her back. He’s not hugging her particularly tightly, but he’s relaxing under her touch, and he’s holding her in return.

It’s something.

It’s amazing.

Just the feeling of him like this, warm and vulnerable and _relaxed_ , leaves Rey feeling optimistic. They can do this - whatever _this_ turns out to be - the two of them, together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Visual inspiration for the first scene is here: http://reyssolo.tumblr.com/post/172468773866/restless-af-alcalafalas-they-knew-they-would


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as always to Julia for being a magnificent beta <3

**After**

When Rey wakes, her vision is blurry. Her body radiates pain, and she feels disoriented and confused. Through the Force, she gets a vague sense that everyone she cares about is near her - some nearer than others if Finn’s curious face just inches from hers is any indication.

“Rey?” he asks, sounding hopeful and a bit eager.

Rey blinks a few times, eyes struggling to stay open under the harsh lights of the med bay. Everything is white, smelling sterile and a little salty from the bacta. She’s just got one patch left, on her forearm. The rest of her has healed up nicely since they were rescued.

“What’s --?” Rey begins, but doesn’t finish her sentence. She winces and rolls her head to the side, away from Finn, away from the harsh lights.

Her mouth is dry, her throat scratchy. Poe, who sits on Rey’s other side, offers her something to drink without saying a word. He looks tired, like he’s been standing vigil at Finn’s side - Finn, who likely hasn’t left Rey since she’d been rescued. She’s grateful for Finn’s loyalty, but she has a lot of questions - least of all why Ben isn’t sitting by her side.

“Where’s...?” she begins

“Rey, are you alright?” Finn interrupts. “Are you in pain? We can get you some more -”

“Finn, buddy,” Poe says. He _sounds_ exhausted. Rey applauds his patience with Finn. Sometimes - though he means well - Finn can be a little overwhelming, a little too enthusiastic with his friendship and support. “Let her talk.”

“Where’s Ben?” Rey asks again.

Finn frowns. He looks up at Poe. Poe’s always had a little easier time talking about Ben. With their past… it makes sense.

Poe used to know Ben, before he’d gone off to Luke’s Jedi Academy. They were childhood friends, back when Leia was a mentor to Poe’s parents. Together Ben and Poe had played in Poe’s backyard, near the Force sensitive tree the Damerons had planted, Poe watching with big eyes as this little kid lifted rocks at the tree’s base, showing off his powers.

Poe was one of the few people who believed Rey when she said there was still good in Ben Solo - he’d seen it, though there was a lot to work through to begin to accept this man again. And when this man had re-appeared at the Resistance base, Poe found he had to explain to a lot of people why he believed Rey so easily. Now, everyone knew their past.

“He took most of the hit,” Poe explains, his expression grave. He brushes a hand over his scruff - he hasn’t showered or shaved in days, Rey would guess - and he lets out another sigh. “He took a big hit to the head. They’ve kept him sedated to try to decrease swelling, keep it from damaging anything.”

“What?” Rey asks, feeling like the wind has been knocked out of her lungs.

Poe frowns. “He’s hurt bad, Rey. Whatever you guys were doing out there - why you were in a _meteor range_ \- it’s beyond me,” Poe says. He almost looks annoyed. “We found you guys before the ship fell to pieces. A few seconds later and we might’ve lost you both.”

“Will he be alright?” she asks.

“The medics think so, yeah,” Poe nods, though he looks grave. “He just needs a few more days to rest. They’ve got him in a bacta suit, and the General checks in on him, too. Once they say the swelling has gone down enough, they’ll let him wake up.”

“What swelling?” Rey asks.

“In his head,” Poe explains. He looks up at Finn, who looks ready to burst with everything he wants to say and ask. Poe makes his bit quick. “When you guys got hit, we think some of the roof collapsed in. He took a hard hit to his head - the medic is shocked there wasn’t more damage. Lots of blood, though. All over my new ship.”

Rey feels a flash of relief as she says, “You saved him, though.”

“General’s orders,” Poe shrugs. There’s a look in his eye that tells Rey he would’ve done it anyway, though, even if Finn disagrees with their kindness towards Ben.

“Finn, I’m fine,” Rey interjects before Finn can ask anything. “Thank you for watching over me. But I’d very much like to see my husband now.”

\---

Ben looks… normal.

As soon as Rey proved that she didn’t have any lasting damage, the medic released her. Immediately, she’d walked through the small med bay to Ben, where he lay in all white in a bacta suit, just as Finn once had.

It’s odd to her, seeing him in such white, bright surroundings. They’ve even put him in some white clothing as he rests. There’s one small tube attached to his arm, keeping him asleep as the swelling slowly diminishes in his head.

Rey sits dutifully at his side, clutching his hand. He’s strong, and she knows he’ll come out of this, but it’s the waiting that kills her. He’s been through so much - he shouldn’t have to go through this, too.

“It’s times like these I wish he’d learned to heal himself faster,” Leia says.

At the sound of her voice, Rey turns around, looking over her shoulder. The years haven’t been kind to the General. She looks tired, like she’s ready to give up the fighting and live out her days somewhere quiet and peaceful with the few people she has left.

 _It must be incredibly difficult_ , Rey thinks, _to get her son back just to see him end up like this._

“Not sure it would make much difference when he’s unconscious,” Rey counters, her voice solemn and soft.

Leia chuckles. “You’d be surprised what the Force can do,” she replies. “But even so. He would have taught you, and you would’ve done your best to help.”

“I can still try,” Rey says earnestly. So far, she’s had pretty good luck trying out all the “mythical” Force tricks she heard about on Jakku to see if they really work.

“You don’t need to do that,” Leia says, standing next to Rey where she sits dutifully by Ben’s bed. “He’ll be fine. He’ll wake up soon, I know it.”

Rey nods. She’s quiet, pensive. She doesn’t know what to say, but the silence hanging around them tells her she doesn’t need to speak. The comfort she and Leia find in each other’s presence has settled around them once more.

They look at Ben, at the scars he wears on his body, reminding him and everyone around him of everything he’s done, the good and the bad. And now there’s one more to add to the list, one that will always make Rey feel a little bit guilty as she sees it curling up into his hairline. He’s tough, but she knows he doesn’t like to look at himself in the mirror, even still. It’s all part of the past - a past he wants to let burn.

Without words, Leia holds out her hand. In it lays a plain titanium band similar to the one on Rey’s finger. His wedding ring. The weight is familiar in Rey’s palm as she takes it, the surface still in pristine condition since he wears it under his glove - it’s not scratched and worn from work like Rey’s is. Very gently, Rey slides it back onto his finger. The medics must have taken it off when they changed him, to keep him in the med bay. Rey is forever thankful Leia is there to look after them.

“He’ll wake up soon, Rey. I can feel it,” Leia says.

She rests her hand on Rey’s shoulder in a gesture of comfort. Rey turns to look over her shoulder as Leia leaves, before she faces her husband once more. “Please wake up soon,” Rey whispers, taking his larger hand in both of her smaller ones. She brushes her thumb over his knuckles, and then his wedding ring.

With tearful eyes, Rey pleads, “Come back. I love you.”

 

**Before**

As much as Leia was loathe for it to happen, she felt a sort of comfort as word began to spread that General Hux was the Supreme Leader of the First Order, that Kylo Ren had abandoned his post, forever marked a traitor. Then there were whispers around the base that they’d seen him in the east corridors - that his tall, dark shadow was unmistakable. Ben and Rey really weren’t very subtle but at least it was warming the Resistance members to the idea of Ben defecting - even if he hadn’t.

They trained together daily, unless Rey was needed for repairs or debriefing on strategy and future plans. Leia didn’t involve her son in any of it - it would be too risky - but things started to naturally unfold until one day, Leia walked into the mess hall to see Rey and Ben sitting at a table, in front of what remained of the Resistance - and nobody was fighting him. There was much confusion and a little betrayal, but without the mask and the cowl, wearing whatever dark clothing he could find in the supply store, Kylo Ren - no, _Ben Solo_ \- wasn’t nearly as intimidating as everyone had suspected.

It probably helped a lot that Rey sat near him, treating him kindly, and Poe, Finn, and a few other pilots sat with them. There wasn’t much conversation, and Rey could sense that there was  a lot of bad blood, but she felt relief and pride at knowing her friends were trying. That they hadn’t written him off completely.

Then their training sessions turned… _heated_. Together, in a domed room probably meant for battling at one point, the two of them sparred with metal rods salvaged from the junk pile in the hangar. They couldn’t wield lightsabers as Rey hadn’t managed to repair the one she’d been using - though Ben was helping her with that, too. They took their time, and sometimes even partook in hand to hand combat instead.

That proved dangerous, because Ben fought with his whole body, and Rey was scrappy and unaware of the effect her body could have upon a man. Usually, hand to hand combat ended in the two of them on the floor, rolling around, sweating and panting and thinking _what if_.

Just a few standard months after the battle of Crait, Rey and Ben find themselves in this very situation, Rey smirking as she straddles his hips and presses hard against his forearms, forcing him to stay lying against the cold stone ground. They’d fought for what felt like hours, until their muscles were screaming at them to stop. Ben’s hair is damp and a few tendrils stick to his sweaty skin. He looks up at Rey, panting, and she looks back down at him. “I win,” she says with a grin.

He closes his eyes and relaxes under her touch, laying his head against the ground for a moment to try to catch his breath. He doesn’t often agree with Rey, but this time he does, nodding and admitting his defeat. He does a lot of things for Rey that he wouldn’t do for anyone else. Very gently, she releases her grip on his arms, but she doesn’t climb off of his lap. Ben looks up at her and then rests up on his elbows, intrigued by this new development.

Rey looks confused, and then pensive, and Ben wants so badly to try to peek inside her mind, to see what’s going on. She shifts on his lap, but still doesn’t move - and when she shifts, she bites her lip. Her cheeks are flushed, but Ben tells himself it’s just from the fighting. But yet the fact that she’s stayed planted on his lap is odd and unknown. Her hands rest on her thighs, but she’s gripping her legs tightly, knuckles almost white with it.

Very curious indeed.

He sits up a little more, wondering if she’s going to move now that their chests are nearly pressed together. She doesn’t. There’s something shining in her eyes and Ben can feel her costernation and curiosity as she stays put, hands now fiddling with the fabric of his tunic.

“Do it,” Ben says bravely, making assumptions about where Rey’s mind is going, what she’s thinking about doing.

She looks up at him in surprise, her whole face flushing beet red. “I -,” she stammers.

But then she nods and looks dutiful and determined as she leans in, hands gently cupping his face. Their noses bump, and Ben swears he can hear the thrum of Rey’s heartbeat. Ever so softly, her lips press tentatively to his, the faintest of touches. She’s testing out the feeling - she’s never kissed anyone before - but realizes she hadn’t pressed hard enough to really understand what it’s like. So Rey presses her mouth to his again, a little more confidence behind it, and her breath catches in her throat.

Ben’s hands are warm like fire where he holds her hips, almost as if he’s trying to encourage her, beg her for more. Rey moves her hands to his shoulders and adjusts her lips against his, reveling in how soft and warm his mouth is, how comforting his touch suddenly feels. Still straddling his lap, Rey kisses Ben with increasing fervor, like this could be her only chance to ever be this close with him again. And _maker_ , does she love kissing him. If this were her last chance, she’d never want it to end. She feels so silly for thinking it, but Rey very much thinks she could die like this and she’d be the happiest woman in the galaxy.

So they train every evening, and it always devolves into kisses and touches and exploring each other’s bodies. They grow close in a way that nobody else at the base quite understands, but never has the courage to question. Finn comes close, sometimes, but Poe cuts him off. Whatever this is, Poe is almost certain it’ll be short-lived. The galaxy doesn’t make room for terrible people like Kylo Ren to grow old. Whatever this is will end soon enough, in its own way, so they ought to let the two of them enjoy it while they can.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you thank you, Julia, for beta'ing this chapter!

**Before**

Ben and Rey grow closer as the days wear on. She can sense him through the Force, tell when he’s having a good day, or when something is troubling him. As she finishes some repair work on the Falcon, she feels a disturbance in the Force.

Something’s wrong with Ben.

Rey drops her tools in haste, ignoring Chewbacca’s questioning howl in favor of seeking out Ben immediately. She follows his signature in the Force and discovers that he’s nowhere near their quarters at the end of the east wing. No, he’s somewhere at the center, near his mother’s room.

Rey doesn’t bother knocking - she charges past the first door, and then through a second, to find Ben standing over boxes, fuming.

Rey can feel his anger and his frustration radiating across the room. She gives him space, but makes sure he knows she’s there. Whatever this is, it’s not like when he gets angry in the training room or has projected anger to her in the past. This is something far more painful than anger.

It’s memories.

Very hesitantly, Rey steps closer to Ben, keeping a wide berth just in case. As she gets closer, she starts to see what’s piled up in the boxes. There are a few keepsakes - blankets, some medals, a beautiful jeweled necklace - and then there are piles upon piles of photographs filled with memories.

Ben holds a crumpled up photo in his hand, and Rey is most curious about that one. She’s slow and gentle as she slides the paper from Ben’s hand. He’s wearing his leather gloves, his hair hanging in his face. He’s not feeling particularly good that day, to start with. She can tell by his clothing. But his mood is dark, filling the room with anger and negativity and frustration. Rey has to try not to be consumed by it as she looks at the photograph in her hand.

It’s very clearly Han Solo, and she has to blink a few times before realizing that the boy on his hip is none other than Ben, somewhere in the ballpark of six years old with a toothless grin and gold dice hanging from a chain in his hand. That’s the thing he’d been holding back on Crait, the thing that had disappeared from his hand. And this was what his childhood was like - disappointment fragmented by little brief moments of happiness.

There were so many similarities between Ben _then_ and Ben _now_ \- his disheveled dark hair, his pronounced nose and chin, his long limbs. But now Ben is strong where he was once scrawny. He’s scarred from years of battling and fighting for survival, for what he believed was right at the time - and more painfully, the joy from his face is gone. It strikes Rey in that moment that she’s never seen him smile. That it’s entirely likely she’ll never see him smile in her lifetime.

Rey smooths out the photo and rests it back in the box before she turns her attention fully to Ben. “Come on,” she coaxes gently, one hand resting on his forearm. “We should go.”

“She kept it all,” Ben says angrily. “I hurt her. I _killed him_. Yet she kept everything.”

Rey frowns; she’s not entirely sure what he expects her to say to that. Yes, Leia kept it all. They’re memories of a life once lived, of a life she loved if the memories collected from it are any indication.

She peeks into one of the boxes as sees more photos of Ben as a child - some with other people in them that she doesn’t immediately recognize - a man and woman and another child, all with curly dark hair and olive skin. Rey squints a few times before she gets the realization that she knows the boy in that photo, too - the one standing next to Ben, looking at him like he was a god as he held a small lightsaber in his hands.

“Dameron,” Ben hisses, snatching the photo out of Rey’s hand and tossing it haphazardly back into the box. “That was a lifetime ago.” He shoves the boxes across the tabletop and then steps back, away from the harsh, painful memories. “The past needs to _die_.”

Rey frowns and steps in front of him now, standing between Ben and the memories he wants so badly to forget. “Maybe…” Rey begins. “Maybe that part of your past needs to live. The good things - they’re what remind us that life is worth living. They teach us that… that there’s hope.”

Ben’s eyes are dark, and Rey knows she’s walking a dangerous line. She’s never been around him when he’s been quite so angry. It feels a little terrifying, but she has faith in him, that in his anger, he won’t hurt her. “ _You_ are what makes life worth living,” he snaps. “Not the junk in those boxes.”

Something twists in Rey’s chest at his declaration. She’d known that she mattered a great deal to him, but not that much. Hearing she matters that much to a person - it’s staggering. Rey doesn’t know what to say to that, or how to accept that sort of admiration. “I understand that the memories are difficult,” Rey says, pointedly avoiding asking all the questions she wants to ask. Desperately, she wants to know more about his childhood, about who he used to be. Why he despises that version of himself so much. “I can’t change that. But… don’t destroy them. They matter so much to your mother.” Rey feels herself getting emotional, her eyes blinking, tears blurring her vision. “What do you want me to do?”

Ben looks like he’s desperately trying to find an answer to her question, but he doesn’t have one. He doesn’t know what he wants to happen to all those boxes full of memories - he just knows that he’s angry he found them, that he’s angry they dredged up such horrible memories. “I want to forget them,” he snaps.

Rey’s expression saddens. “I can’t do that for you,” she shakes her head. “I don’t know how. I don’t even know if that’s _possible_ .” Very slowly, Rey takes a step towards him. She blinks and a tear slides down her cheek. His anger and sadness is overwhelming, swirling around the room, mixing with Rey’s confusion and helplessness in a way that means she can’t stop the tears. “But I _can_ help you make new memories,” she promises. “I can and I _will_. You can forget the past but don’t forget to give yourself a future. One you’ll want to remember.” Very slowly, Rey holds out her hand. “I can help you do that,” she promises.

With a scoff, Ben lets his anger best him and he asks, “And how would you do that?”

Rey blinks another tear down her cheek. He doesn’t mean to project all of this anger and frustration on her - she has to remind herself of that. “I don’t know,” she shrugs. She’s whispering, her voice full of emotion as another set of tears blink down her cheeks. “However you want me to. I’ll stay with you. I’ll _be_ with you.”

“Out of pity?”

“No,” Rey shakes her head. “I care about you, Ben. You’re one of the most important people to me.” Rey releases a trembling breath. “You were there for me and understood me when nobody else did.” She looks up at him with glistening eyes. “You’re not alone, remember?” She lets out a derisive laugh, her grand speech not having the effect that she’d hoped. Rey’s heart hammers in her chest as she confesses, “I love you, Ben.”

Ben stares at Rey, that one word making it obvious to him all of a sudden, just how terribly he’s been treating Rey, the woman who’s stood at his side even when she shouldn’t have. Saved him when he didn’t deserve saving. “You love me?” he asks, a hint of derision in his voice, of self-deprecation that tells Rey he doesn’t feel deserving of love. “ _Me_?”

“Yes,” Rey nods. Now isn’t the time to second guess, to doubt. She knows what she feels deep in her chest, and denying it will only make things harder for both of them. “I love you. And - and I hate seeing you like this and I hate not knowing how to fix it, and,” she hiccups, “and you deserve a better life than the one Luke set you up for.”

“It wasn’t just Luke,” Ben argues.

“I don’t care!” Rey declares. She steps closer to Ben now, turning his anger into her anger, his determination and stubbornness into her own. “I need you to believe me when I say I love you. I need you to understand that you’re not disposable. Not anymore.”

Ben looks into Rey’s eyes, glassy with unshed tears, and he suddenly feels the staggering weight of her love and attachment to him. When he’d first met her, he’d felt such loneliness emanating from her. Now that loneliness was gone, replaced with something that felt like home, something words couldn’t describe. He’d thought it was the Resistance, but… somehow, he begins to believe that it was actually because of him. Because he was a constant in Rey’s life - because he wasn’t going anywhere.

That’s about when it hits him that he’s been treating Rey poorly out of anger at his mother and father. That Rey lets him take out his frustrations at her, lets him shout at her and project his anger into the room in a way that can’t be easy for her - and yet here she still stands.

“I’m sorry.”

Rey’s brow furrows and suddenly pain echoes through the room.

“Oh.”

She looks down at the floor and suddenly feels stupid. She’d put herself out there on the line, told him how she felt, and all he’d said was _I’m sorry_ . When Ben realizes what she thinks he means, he reaches out for her immediately, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Rey, no, that’s not -” he takes a breath, “Not that. I,” he fights for the words, fights to get them out, “I love you too. I meant I’m sorry because I took it out on you. Not - _that_.”

Rey looks up at him, her face contorted in anger. She smacks him in the chest so hard he stumbles back a little. “You’re so stupid sometimes,” she says through her tears - half laughing, half crying.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

She hits his chest again, but with less anger. When he tries to stop her by embracing her, Rey melts into it, her face buried in his chest.

“I’m sorry,” Ben echoes.

Rey wraps her arms around his waist. “Don’t ever do that again,” she mutters into his tunic. She never wants to feel the cold sting of rejection ever again.

“I promise,” he says dutifully. “I won’t turn you down, ever again.”

“Good,” Rey says firmly. “I’m not sure I could handle it.”

 

**After**

Rey has to wait three whole days before the medics say they feel comfortable taking Ben off the sedative. That morning, they take him out of the bacta tank and put him in some white robes and in a bed to wake up on his own. Impatiently, Rey sits at his side, holding his hand, brushing her thumb over the warm titanium wedding band on his hand. Leia stays with her, waiting just as eagerly to make sure her son is alright. Through the Force, Leia can feel Rey’s joy when Ben starts to slowly move, his hand clutching at Rey’s, his eyes starting to blink open.

When he looks around, his face is filled with confusion. “Ben,” Rey breathes. Their eyes meet. “You’re awake. You look good.” She smiles at him, relief flooding her.

Ben’s brow furrows and he withdraws his hands. He looks down at the blankets, at the white clothing he’s wearing, and then back up at Rey and his mother. “What are _you_ doing here?” he asks his mother. Ben turns to Rey, his eyes fierce as he says, “As my nurse you should know better than to let someone from the _other side_ into my quarters.”

Now it’s Rey’s turn to be confused. She looks almost saddened as she asks, “Nurse?”

“Yes. That _is_ why you’re here, isn’t it?” he snaps. Ben looks down at his clothing and says bitterly, “Standard issue med materials are navy blue. Where _am_ I?”

“Ben -,” Leia begins.

“My name is _Kylo Ren_.”

His eyes look dangerous and Rey can sense that he’s seconds away from blowing up at them. “Ben, please,” Rey pleads. “I’m not your nurse, I’m your _wife_ . We got married that night you took me to Naboo, remember? Just you and me?” She reaches for his hand again, but Ben snatches it away. “Please… you _know_ me.”

“No, I don’t,” he shakes his head. “I’m not married. Snoke and the First Order - we have very strict plans for the future.” Ben’s voice is booming and firm and terrify Rey just a little bit. “Plans that don’t involve _love_.”

She stands, unsure if she can handle any more of this. Desperately clinging to one last shred of hope, she pleads, “Please, Ben.”

Ben’s gaze is unwavering, eyes blank as he says, “I don’t even know your name.”

Rey’s lower lip starts to tremble and she feels her heart beginning to shatter as she turns on her heel and leaves the med bay. Out in the corridor, Rey paces back and forth a few times, muttering to herself that she shouldn’t cry, that this is just temporary, that it’ll be okay. Defeated and exhausted, Rey presses her back against the wall and slides down, arms resting on her legs. She buries her face in her hands and lets out a heavy sob as the tears begin to fall.

They’d been through so much, worked so hard to get to where they’d been. They were happy together, she and Ben. They’d started making memories he didn’t despise, and Rey’s loneliness was finally, finally gone.

Now it felt like it was all ripped away from her, shredded to bits, obliterated. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do next. He didn’t even remember her _name_. Every memory he had of her was gone, and that stung worse than abandonment ever could. Face buried in her hands, Rey sits in the corridor and weeps until her sadness and exhaustion become too much to bear.

\---

Rey wakes with a start when she feels something touching her shoulder. She sits up frantically, looking around with frightened eyes. When she looks up, she realizes that it was Ben, standing over her in the hallway. He looms over her from this height, as she sits on the floor and he stands as tall as he is. His hair hangs in his face and he studies her curiously. “You remember?” Rey asks hopefully, standing up.

He shakes his head, watching her closely as the flicker of hope fades quickly from her eyes. Awkwardly, she holds out the backpack she’d been using as a pillow. “I brought you some clothes,” she offers. “I thought you’d prefer this to… that,” she nods at the white shirt and trousers he’d been put in while lying in the med bay.

Ben looks confused, his dark eyes boring into her, trying to read her.

“I didn’t do anything to them,” Rey says gently. “They’re your clothes left over from when you were with the First Order. I thought you’d be most comfortable in those.”

It goes against everything Ben knows, but he realizes that in this moment, it’s only appropriate to respond at least _not angrily_. He takes the bag from Rey, nodding his thanks. Hesitantly, he asks, “What’s your name?”

Rey takes a deep breath, willing the tears not to spring forward to her eyes once more as that painful twist in her chest comes back at full force. Ben feels it through the Force, can sense that he’s hurting her, but doesn’t know how _not_ to, given he doesn’t know her. “Rey,” she says.

“Rey who?”

Rey crosses her arms and asks hesitantly, “Would it freak you out if I said Solo?”

“A little,” he nods. “Before me. Who were you?”

With a shrug, Rey confesses, “I don’t know. Nobody, I suppose.”

“Everyone’s _somebody_ ,” Ben argues.

Rey sighs. “I was abandoned by my parents on Jakku, when I was little. I really am nobody.”

That confession hurts a lot more after she’d gotten to be somebody for a while. She’d been somebody to him, once upon a time. He’d given her a surname, a family to whom she could belong. But now it was gone.

“You understand why I don’t trust you,” he says, assuming she’s already tried to see his side of things. “I’d like to verify a few things before… _whatever this is_ continues.”

Rey sniffles, but blessedly the tears never fall. She nods silently and walks with him back into his room. It’s so white it’s blinding - she wants to make him go change into the comfortable dark clothing she’d brought him, but fears that if she loses this moment, she’ll never get it back.

Ben sits on the edge of his bed and gestures to Rey to sit in the chair across from it. The chair where she’d sat for so many days, full of hope for his recovery. Now, it felt like a punishment. “How did we meet?”

Rey sighs. She needs to contend now with the question of how much truth to share with him. If he truly doesn’t remember things… maybe she can save him some of the pain of knowing what he’d once done. With a frown, she says, “On Takodana. You found me, during the battle. You took me to the _Finalizer_.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she lies. “Once I was there, you realized I could use the Force. I got away, but you tracked me down. You and Snoke wanted me for something, I don’t know…” Rey feels guilt almost immediately at the fact that she’s not telling him the full truth. But the way he’d reacted to his past, to the things he’d done, even when he had all of his memories left her fearful of how he’d react to such a thing when he’s so volatile and unpredictable in his recovery.

“We fought in the woods, on Starkiller Base,” Rey continues. “It’s where -”

Ben sits up, an impressed look on his face. “It’s completed?” he asks. Rey nods. “The last I remember, we’d just sent the order through for the materials to start construction.”

Rey doesn’t know how long ago that was. She frowns. “What year is it?” he asks instead.

“Thirty-six ABY. Nearly thirty-seven.”

Ben nods, doing the calculations in his head. “Five years,” he says finally. “I’m missing five years of memories. You understand now, why I can’t trust you? A lot can happen in five years.”

“Yes,” she nods in agreement. “A _lot_ can happen.”

“If Snoke and I needed you for something, then why are you free now?” he asks. It’s a valid question, but one Rey isn’t sure he’s read to hear the answer to.

She takes a deep breath and says, “We can connect… with our minds.”

“Looking in someone’s mind, I know,” he nods, a bit irritated. “A basic Jedi trick. Useful for interrogations. I’ve heard of it, but Snoke hasn’t taught me how to perfect the skill yet.”

Rey frowns. “Not that,” she says. “Something different. We could see each other. We could talk. Touch. It was different.” Rey gets an almost wistful look in her eyes as she says, “We had it. Snoke did something to make it happen, and then…” she shrugs. “One day you saved my life when you didn’t have to, and the rest became history.”

“We were connected.”

Rey nods.

“So we got married because the Supreme Leader connected our minds and we found ourselves in a moment of weakness,” Ben states like it’s fact. Rey’s chest aches at his words. “And when we went out on a… _date_ ,” he nearly spits the word out, “our ship was struck by a meteor and I ended up here.” He looks at Rey with dark, lifeless eyes and asks, “Am I missing any part of this story?”

Rey shakes her head. Nervously, she toys with the ring on her finger, and Ben looks down at his own left hand. He studies the ring for what feels like forever. Finally, very slowly, he slides it off and holds it out to Rey. Tears spring instantly to her eyes. “I think it’s best you hold onto this,” he explains. “I don’t know you. I swore my life to Snoke, to destroying the Jedi. That means no attachments. No romance. This isn’t what I would have done.”

“Please, no,” Rey begs. “Just… wear it a little longer. Maybe it’ll help you remember. Objects can hold memories.”

“Not objects this new,” he says simply. Ben reaches out for Rey’s hand and she looks down, pressing her eyes shut, trying so desperately hard not to cry. “Keep it. If I remember, then I can take it back,” he says. He’s being gentle with her - he genuinely doesn’t remember the animosity that had once been between them. Somehow, that hurts Rey, too. “It means much more to you,” he adds.

As soon as the words are out, Ben realizes abstractly that what he’s said has hurt Rey. It’s hard to comprehend how someone could feel so much pain from a situation like this. Attachment isn’t something he yearns for - or hadn’t, five years ago. He doesn’t understand why she cares so much.

He presses the ring into her palm and closes her hand around it. Rey lets out a sob and turns to leave the room without looking back. Ben watches her, slightly annoyed at such a blatant need for affection and belonging. Those were weaknesses, didn’t she know? What sort of Jedi could she possibly be if she yearned for love so badly?

Rey senses every emotion soaring through Ben’s head, which only fuel her tears along further. She walks through the corridors of the base and as far away from their quarters in the east wing as possible, only stopping when she reaches the familiar rusty orange door of Finn and Poe’s room. Rey knocks desperately, over and over again even though it’s the middle of the night, until one of them wakes.

Finn is the most alert, his face still blank with sleep as he tugs a white tee shirt on while opening the door. He stands in boxers and a tee shirt, confused, as Rey launches herself at him and sobs into his shirt unabashedly. “Whassit?” Poe mumbles from the bed.

Finn looks over his shoulder in confusion, turning a little so that Poe can see it’s Rey, that she’s upset. Poe frowns immediately. He stumbles out of bed as well, not bothering to put on a shirt. “Rey?” Finn asks as Poe closes the door and starts rifling around the small closet they share for a spare blanket or something. “Are you alright?” Finn asks.

Rey shakes her head, weeping, unable to speak through her sadness.

Poe wrestles a blanket from the top corner of the closet and drapes it over his arm. He walks to Finn and Rey, sympathetic but unsure of what to say. “Hey, it’ll be alright,” Poe insists. He’s not actually sure if it’ll be alright, not in Kylo’s case. But these are the words Rey needs to hear. “Head injuries are pretty common. Never met a pilot who didn’t get at least one. They lose some memories from time to time, but they always come back.” He offers Rey the blanket.

“You can stay as long as you need,” Finn insists.

He looks up at Poe, who has a bad feeling that whatever it is that’s going on with Ben, this is just the beginning, and it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it ever gets better.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you to my dear Julia for being my beta on this fic. You are a dear <3

Rey sits in the mess hall at lunch time with Finn, Poe, Snap, and Jess. They’re chattering about Poe’s new ship, the seat to Rey’s left - Ben’s seat - empty. They’re ignoring it. Rey picks at her food, which is something they’ve never seen her do before, and it tells them that she’s really struggling with this new development. 

“Rey, you’ve hardly eaten anything,” Jess observes.

Rey glances up and sets down her fork. “Oh. I’m not very hungry, that’s all,” she lies. She slides her plate of food out to the center of the table, hoping someone else will eat it so none of the food goes to waste.

“It’s going to be okay,” Snap insists. “Pilots get head injuries all the time. I bet it’s not the guy’s first bang-up. He’ll get the memories back.”

Rey, who’d still been wearing her own wedding band, decides now is the time to tell them what happened the other night. “He came to talk to me,” she explains. “That first night. He wasn’t mean -”

“That’s progress!” Jess says optimistically.

“But he wasn’t nice, either. He kept asking me how we met and what happened between us, and…” Rey trails off.

The pilots and Finn exchange glances before Poe asks, “What’d you tell him?”

There’s a lot of bad blood there that she could have told him - a lot of horrible things he’d done that could seriously affect whether he regains his memories. Rey shrugs. “I told him we met during the battle, and that he and Snoke wanted something from me. And then I told him that… we grew to care for each other.”

Everyone has always known there was more to Rey and Ben’s story than they were sharing, and it was true. Rey and Ben had chosen early on, in counsel with Leia, to keep their connection of the mind to themselves. They didn’t want to be seen as a liability, as traitors. “So what happened?” Jess asks.

Rey takes a deep breath and sits up a little taller, trying very hard to stay strong. The past few days have been emotional, and she’s cried more than she probably should have. “He gave me the ring back,” she says, trying so desperately to sound cavalier, like she’s not ripping open the wound again by talking about it.

“Rey…” Finn says, sounding truly sympathetic for the first time.

He may not have fully supported Rey’s relationship with Ben, but he could see when she returned from Naboo with a ring on her finger and Ben’s hand in hers, smiles on  _ both _ of their faces - he could tell they shared something rare and inexplicable that he had no business getting involved in.

“I mean, maybe you have to think about this as a win,” Finn offers, wincing as soon as the words come out. Rey looks at him, hurt. “He doesn’t remember you! You can get away from all that drama.” Now there’s a flare of anger in Rey’s eyes. “Yeah, that. The anger stuff. I know he still has it. You guys aren’t happy  _ all _ the time.”

“You guys are a great support system,” Rey says flatly, standing to leave. 

Rey turns to leave the table and nearly knocks General Leia flat on her back. “Woah, hold on there,” Leia says, resting her hands on Rey’s shoulders. “Calm down.” Leia looks across the table to Finn and says, “He didn’t mean a word he just said.”

“How long were you there?” Poe asks.

“Long enough,” Leia responds. She looks at Rey with empathetic eyes, one hand drifting up to push some flyaway hairs out of Rey’s face. “He’s going to remember you. He’s going to remember  _ all of us _ , okay? We’re a family.”

Rey frowns deeper and looks at her feet. Somehow, she doesn’t find comfort in Leia’s words his time. She’s so used to trusting this woman with anything and everything, but in this moment… it’s hard to have faith after the conversation she’s just had with Ben. 

“Go visit him,” Leia encourages. “Keep showing him that you care.”

The thought of being rejected yet again - upon every visit to his room - makes Rey’s chest constrict painfully. She’s suddenly filled with dread at the prospect of facing him once more. But when they married, Rey made a promise. She promised to love him at his best, but more importantly when he was at his worst. She promised to help him through his toughest moments at this was, undoubtedly, one of his toughest.

Rey sets her jaw and tries very hard to push the emotion out of her face. With a slight nod, Rey walks away from the table, and from Leia, in the direction of the med bay.

The hallways are full of people minding their own business, doing their own thing, not a care in the world. Sure, the First Order is still a threat, but everyone is in a period of rebuilding, the Resistance especially, so their problems are rather small for now. Rey resents them a little, being able to go on so easily with their days when she’s been handed this new situation to try to work through. Her husband doesn’t remember her, doesn’t remember drifting to the light. All of those good memories they’d created together were  _ gone _ .

When she reaches the med bay, Rey stops in her tracks to see that it’s empty. “Erm, Dr. Kalonia?” Rey asks, looking around for the medic. “Where’s Ben?”

“Kylo Ren has requested private counsel with his organization, to arrange transportation back to his position,” Dr. Kalonia says. She sounds a bit blank, a bit off-kilter. Like the Stormtrooper Rey convinced with the Force to release her from her restraints on the  _ Finalizer _ . Dread pools in Rey’s stomach.

“Where is he?” Rey asks, panicked.

“Training room B,” Dr. Kalonia replies.

Rey sprints out of the med bay as fast as she can, nearly knocking over a droid in her haste. The path to training room B is a familiar one - it’s the room they always used to train and spar. Curious that he should know to ask for that one specifically, Rey realizes.

When she gets there, she stops outside the door, fearful of what she might find. Rey takes a few moments to catch her breath before she opens the door. 

Ben - no,  _ Kylo Ren _ , she realizes bitterly - stands in the center of the room facing a shimmering blue projection of General Hux. She can feel Kylo’s frustration and anger as the two speak. For a moment, Rey wonders how they even got in contact with each other, but then remembers that he’d kept his personal comm code, just in case. There were others in the Order who didn’t agree with Hux, and he’d wanted them to have an out, someone to try to reach if the situation were really dire. And Hux must have contacted that code.

At the sound of her presence, Kylo looks up with such venom in his eyes that she cannot possibly comprehend what is about to come next. 

He feeds on that anger as he shuts off the projection and crosses the room towards her. Rey has to work hard to keep calm, to stand tall and remember that behind all this, there’s the man she fell in love with. “Why were you speaking to him?” Rey asks bluntly. “You haven’t had contact with the First Order in nearly a year.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you killed the Supreme Leader?” he shouts.

Rey stops dead in her tracks. She hadn’t killed Snoke - Ben had. What was he talking about? She opens her mouth to say something, but can’t find the words. If Hux has been filling Kylo in on what happened, then either he got the wrong story or he’s trying to put Kylo against Rey to break them apart and get Kylo back with the First Order.

“I don’t  _ remember _ things, Rey!” Kylo shouts. His anger fills the air; Rey nearly chokes with it. She looks at him with desperation on her face, grappling for words so she can give him an answer. “You can’t  _ lie _ to me!”

“I didn’t lie to you about anything!” she protests.

“Get  _ out! _ ” he bellows.

Terrified, having never seen his anger quite so intense, Rey obeys. She flees the training room, unsure of how to fix the situation now. It feels to Rey like she’s just lost him to the Dark Side again, and she doesn’t know how to contend with that feeling.

\---

Rey sits in the mess hall alone that evening, trying desperately to eat when she knows she’s not hungry. She hates the looks of pity and sadness she sees aimed at her from across the room. The stragglers who took a late dinner as she did are shooting her such pity that it makes her skin crawl.

Then everyone quiets. Rey doesn’t look; she’s afraid of what could possibly render everyone speechless in such a way.

A tap on her shoulder reveals that it’s none other than Kylo Ren. Whatever might have been left of Rey’s appetite completely disappears. He sits down next to her and wordlessly, she slides her plate across the table to him. He takes it, noticing that she still wears the titanium band on her left hand. Even still, after he blew up at her as he did.

“Why did I leave the First Order?” he asks without preamble, trying very hard to remain amicable so as to not raise alarm in the other Resistance members.

Rey hesitates. She tucks a stray strand of hair behind her ear and avoids his eyes. “Don’t just say because of you,” he says. “There’s more, and I know it. Whatever it is - I can handle it.”

With a heavy sigh, Rey realizes that she can’t avoid this conversation any longer. “I came to you, on the  _ Finalizer _ . To see you. To…  _ save _ you,” she said softly. “You arrested me and brought me to Snoke. It was all a trick.”

When she turns to look at Kylo, he’s avoiding her gaze, staring down at the plate of food she’d handed him. He holds a fork but hasn’t taken a bite yet. “He wanted you to kill me,” she says, hesitating before she finishes with, “but you killed him, instead.”

She can feel Kylo tense beside her, and Rey pointedly avoids his gaze, letting him mull it over. “ _ I  _ killed the  _ Supreme Leader _ ?” he asks. Clearly, he doesn’t believe her. “Hux told me you did it.”

“I couldn’t,” Rey says simply. “He held me in place, on my knees in front of you. He had me trapped. I couldn’t have done a thing.”

“But his guards,” Kylo argues. “They would have stopped us.”

Rey nods. “Yes. They tried. We killed them all - together,” she explains.

She looks up at him, hoping that the steadfast, determined look in her eyes tells Kylo that she’s not lying. “I don’t know why Hux thinks you did it,” she confesses, never tearing her gaze from Kylo’s. “Maybe that’s what you told him afterwards, I don’t know.” Shrugging, Rey says. “After we fought them off together, you wanted me to go with you. To turn. I couldn’t do it. We fought over the lightsaber, and it split. Before… before the accident,” she says, truly addressing it for the first time, “we were fixing the lightsaber so I could use it again. Together.”

“That lightsaber belongs to me,” he says simply. “It was my grandfather’s.”

Softly, Rey muses, “I quite like your current one - the red one.” Kylo stares blankly, not understanding. It hadn’t been made to appeal to anyone - it had been made to kill. “I do,” Rey insists. “The hum of it - it’s… soothing.”

Kylo looks at her strangely, and Rey can’t fight a giggle. “That’s exactly how you reacted the first time I said that, too.”

“Look,” he begins flatly, growing uncomfortable with this imbalance in their relationship. “The last thing I remember is putting through the order to build Starkiller Base. I was still training with Snoke, and Hux was certainly  _ not _ Supreme Leader. He had no power within the First Order whatsoever.”

“You believe me though, right?” Rey asks. “I wouldn’t lie to you. I have absolutely nothing to gain from lying to you.” 

Kylo shrugs. “I don’t know what to believe,” he confesses. “I guess… I need proof or something. Proof would help.”

Rey frowns. “If I could show you my memories, I would. You could look in my mind once… can’t you do that again?” she asks helplessly.

The conversation between them dies down. Rey wonders why they hadn’t thought of that in the first place, Kylo reading her mind to see the proof, the memories. Finally, he speaks. “That was a new skill,” he says. “Snoke helped me hone it. After we completed plans for Starkiller Base.”  _ After I lost my memories _ , goes unspoken.

“Surely you could try though, right?” Rey prods. “It’s worth a try.” She stands up and he turns in his chair, to face her. She looks so hopeful, it almost pains Kylo to watch. Rey reaches out and takes his hand, guiding his arm out so it’s outstretched, aimed at her head. “There,” she says. “Now… dig. You’ve done it before. You can do it again.”

Rey focuses on opening her mind, on trusting, to make it easier for Kylo. He tilts his head downwards, concentration on his face, and she feels  _ something _ against her mind. The faint trace of Kylo, but there’s hesitation. Like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and doesn’t know how to push further.

Closing her eyes, Rey tries to reach out with her mind, to find Kylo, to remember every good thing they’ve ever done together and show it to him, but something is standing in their way. There’s something that won’t let their minds connect anymore. Kylo huffs and lowers his hand, angrily turning away from Rey. “Hey, it’s okay,” she says instantly, sitting down and reaching out to rest her hand on his shoulder. He flinches, and Rey tries not to take it personally.

She doesn’t move her hand away, instead choosing to soothe little circles into his shoulder as she sighs and says, “We can figure something out. You’ll remember.”

“What if I don’t?” he asks.

Rey hadn’t even entertained that as a possibility, because she didn’t want to deal with the implications of what would happen if he never did regain his memories. Shrugging, she says, “We’ll deal with that if it comes down to it. But you’re strong. You’ll remember. Just please, don’t go back to the First Order.”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Rey doesn’t press the matter.

\---

Over the course of the following few days, Rey manages to completely avoid she and Ben’s quarters. It’s filled with memories that he’s shrugged off, that he doesn’t seem to want to try to remember. It also reminds her of this new struggle in her life, convincing Ben of who he’s become. It’s easier for her to hide away in the comforts of Finn and Poe’s room. There isn’t a ton of space, but they’ve been understanding, letting her sleep on the sofa, BB-8 beeping away little reassurances.

“I know,” Rey says. “But he doesn’t remember. He says he needs proof.”

More beeps from BB-8. Rey sighs. “That’s a great idea, Beebee-Ate, but he doesn’t remember how to do that trick,” she frowns. “He’s lost all ability to do the powers he learned in the past five years. So now the only proof we have - the stuff in my head - he can’t access.”

BB-8 turns and suddenly starts projecting a scene on the floor next to the sofa. It’s the arrival of Rey and Ben after their trip to Naboo. It’s the two of them, hand in hand -  _ smiling _ . Both of them. And it’s right there, clear as day. Rey suddenly snaps up, eyes wide. “Beebee-Ate, you are the  _ best _ !” she exclaims. “Come on! We have to show him!”

Rey races out of Finn and Poe’s room, down the hallway, and towards the med bay where she knows Kylo is still staying. He refuses to accept a room with the Resistance, refuses to believe that at one point, he’d chosen to defect to the other side, to his  _ mother _ . “Ben!” Rey exclaims as soon as she sees him, BB-8 rolling behind her, nearly bumping into her heels. “I have proof! I -”

She stops dead in her tracks, seeing him in his black gear from head to toe - the clothing he’d defected in, his First Order-issued black tunic, trousers, boots, and cowl. All that was missing were the gloves and his mask. Rey’s heart sinks in her stomach. “What are you doing?” she asks lamely.

“General Hux is sending a ship to Coruscant. I will meet him there,” Kylo says blankly. “I’m well enough, so I’m returning to the First Order. Where I belong.”

“But - I have proof,” Rey says sadly, pleading with him. “Please, stay. Watch what he recorded. You have to believe me. You defected, and you were happy here.”

“Happiness is weakness.”

Rey turns to look at BB-8, nodding at him to please, show the recording.

_ The nondescript black ship touches down in the hangar bay, landing gear whirring under the weight of the vehicle. When the gangway lowers, Rey is right there, grinning from ear to ear. She looks over her shoulder, one arm draped backwards, hand clasped with Ben’s as she leads him off the ship. Her hair is down, loose around her shoulders, and she looks more relaxed than she’s ever been in her life. _

_ Ben follows her down the gangway, wearing all black, but not menacingly as he had with the First Order. He’s in black trousers and a black standard issue tee shirt, his muscular arms slightly sun-kissed from the warmth of the sun on Naboo, where he and Rey had just spent two warm, relaxed weeks. _

_ His eyes shine - even in the small projection it’s clear as day that he’s got happiness written all over his face. Their hands stay clasped and when they reach solid ground, Leia is right there, beaming at them. Rey doesn’t hesitate before she holds out her hand to show her new mother-in-law her ring, Ben standing supportively behind her, an arm around her waist. _

_ Leia’s eyes widen and she looks up at her son, who nods, this time the smile spreading across his face, his joy no longer content to stay a gentle sparkle in his eyes. He lets himself receive a hug from his mother; this is a happy moment, and one he likely would never have had if she hadn’t insisted the two of them go and decompress, try to shrug off the weight of this war from their shoulders. _

_ Then Rey looks up at Ben, who turns to gaze into her eyes before kissing her brazenly in front of everyone in the hangar bay. There’s no sound, but Rey remembers that moment, the hoots and hollers and cheers. The relief she’d felt all around the base, from the people who had been wary of Ben’s true intentions until this moment, seeing his commitment, his smile.  _

_ His humanity. _

“Cute.”

When Rey looks up at him, Kylo looks unamused and a little bewildered. Frantically, Rey looks back at the droid and asks, “Beebee-Ate, have you got anything else? Any other recordings we could show him?”

BB-8 beeps sadly, hanging his mechanical head, shaking it to indicate that no, he doesn’t have anything else. Rey frowns. “It’s proof, though,” she says to Kylo. “You asked for proof and I gave it to you.” She sounds almost desperate, pleading in her attempts to get him to believe. “Look - you left the First Order. You made all these decisions. Your life was  _ here _ . Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to at least stay to try to figure out  _ why _ ?

She sees the annoyance on Kylo’s face, but she’s not going to give up, not yet. He has to try to remember - to put a little effort in - and she’ll do everything she can to help him if he’d only just give her a chance. Finally, he sighs. “Fine. Another week, maybe two,” he concedes.

“I’ll take it,” Rey says eagerly.

“I don’t understand why I would have defected,” he continues tersely. “I was fine with the First Order. I built my life there.”

Rey frowns, but doesn’t get upset or argue. “I understand why you’re confused,” she tells him. “I’m not asking you to make the same decision right away. I’m just asking you to trust me. To let me teach you the things you don’t remember, so you can make the decision again.” Rey looks up into his eyes. “I will do my very best to tell you everything you want to know, so you understand. I want to help you.”

It’s stupid, to trust this girl, but when Kylo sees the ring still on her finger, the hope in her eyes… he senses that this place is meaningful for him. The Force whispers and hums around him, tells Kylo that this girl, this  _ place _ , is home. Even if it’s unfamiliar, it’s something meaningful to him. And that’s why he makes the decision he does - to trust Rey.

“I’m not staying in this med bay,” Kylo says firmly, like he needs to set conditions for his continued presence with the Resistance.

Rey nods. “That’s okay. We can go to our quarters. Maybe being there will help you remember.”

“We have quarters?” he asks.

“Yes,” Rey nods. “In the east wing, sort of private. It’s nothing big or fancy, but it’s home.” She understands that he may only be around a few more weeks, but that doesn’t stop the optimism from shining in her eyes, the faint trace of a smile from playing upon her lips. “Come on,” she says, offering her hand to him. “I’ll show you.”

Kylo stares at her hand for a moment, but decides to grant her this one thing. He takes her hand and rather begrudgingly follows her out of the med bay and through the corridors of the Resistance base. When they reach the room at the far right end of the east corridor, Rey puts her hand to the security panel and the door slides open. 

Rey has never been happier to be home.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you once again to my lovely beta Julia for working so hard to make my writing readable. And thank you to all my lovely readers and commenters - I'm so sorry this took so long. But on the bright side - I'm done with my master's degree!! Thanks for your understanding, and I hope you enjoy xx

Rey offers to let Kylo sleep in the bed, understanding that he may not be comfortable sleeping next to her. That, and she’s much smaller and would fit on the sofa far better than Kylo would. 

He’d taken her up on the offer, because last he knew, he’d never so much as touched a girl’s hand, and now he was supposed to believe he slept next to this woman and had done… everything else a man and wife did? It’s not as though he didn’t want to be with her. He wasn’t stupid; he could recognize a pretty girl when he saw one. 

The fact of the matter is that she’s supposed to be his enemy. He doesn’t want to get her hopes up, let her think for even a second that he’s back to the way she remembers him being. He’s getting tired of the way her eyes light up whenever he says something that isn’t  _ mean _ . 

In short, her hope is irritating.

When he wakes, he hears Rey’s soft footsteps padding through their small room, like she’s trying not to wake him. When Kylo blinks his eyes open, Rey is wandering with a towel wrapped around her, though it’s not covering much at all. The lower hem hardly covers the swell of her bum, and he  _ loathes _ himself for staring.

Whether out of habit or something else, Rey brazenly drops the towel to the floor, her damp hair dripping on her shoulders as she rifles through the closet. He doesn’t understand why she’s so indecisive - all of her clothes look the same: sand colored and drapey. 

He clears his throat, thinking that if she realizes he’s awake, she’ll cover herself up again.

Rey squeaks and turns around in surprise. “Oh! I didn’t know you were awake!” she says. She reaches over for some clothes - briefs and a wrap for her chest - but takes her time putting them on.

“Do you always wander our room naked?” he asks dryly. Pointedly, Kylo stays in bed, beneath the blankets. He’s only human - having just seen a woman naked for the first time in his life, he’s going to react in certain ways, but he’d rather Rey didn’t know about that.

“Oh - sometimes,” Rey confesses, pulling on trousers. “It’s been so long since I got to take a nice shower and take my time. Besides - it’s not like you haven’t seen me before.” She still doesn’t put a top on, choosing instead to grab the towel and wring out her hair some more. And he’s not even going to  _ begin _ to think about what she’s just said regarding her state of undress. There’s something incredibly unnerving about knowing he’d lost his virginity to this woman, yet not remembering a single moment of it. It feels like the biggest travesty of the whole memory loss situation.

“But you had the place to yourself,” Kylo states, clearly confused. 

Rey sighs. “I didn’t stay here, when you were in the med bay,” she explains. “It felt too empty. I stayed with Finn and Poe in their rooms.”

“Bet they loved that,” Kylo says sarcastically.

Rey huffs and  _ finally  _ pulls on a kriffing shirt. Her tunic drapes over the curve of her ass and Kylo wants to shout at her to get out, so he can escape to the ‘fresher and take care of his situation. She’s taking her time, though, and he’s frustrated. “They didn’t mind,” she replies.

“This place isn’t even that big,” he says, looking around in mild distaste.

“We could have had something bigger,” Rey says. “But you wanted privacy more than you wanted space when we first got here. Besides - before joining with the Resistance, my home was a broken AT-AT half buried in the sand. This is heavenly in comparison.”

He stares blankly at her. She’d lived in a piece of junk out in the desert? She  _ had _ said she came from Jakku, but he’d assumed she at least had a little hut or whatever most people lived in out there. He’d never been to Jakku, as far as he could recall, and he never planned on changing that.

“I’m going to get some caf from the mess hall. Do you want any?” she asks when he doesn’t say anything to her previous statement. She keeps forgetting that he has no memories of her, of her life before the Resistance.

“Sure,” he nods. 

Rey finally,  _ finally _ leaves.

Kylo takes his time in the shower, even when he hears Rey come back. He’d taken care of himself by then, though he felt quite a bit of self-loathing at the fact that he’d picured her as he came. They may be married, but he doesn’t remember any of it, so it all feels wrong and creepy to him. When he emerges and faces his array of clothing, a scowl crosses his features. None of it is what he’s used to wearing. The First Order has a strict uniform policy and this… is not it.

Granted, at least it’s all black, which he’s most comfortable in for a myriad of reasons. But it’s still not what he’s used to. He pulls on the black trousers and fumbles around with a few of the shirts before deciding upon a long sleeved black shirt with a few buttons down the front, to about midway down his chest. He leaves the top button open and then combs his hair out of his face with his fingers.

Looking in the mirror, Kylo wonders if this was the man that Rey fell in love with - the man who looks like what could have been had Snoke not shown him the Dark side and to harness his powers. Sighing, he decides to walk towards their small common room, where Rey sits with two cups of caf. She hands one to Kylo and smiles at him.

“What?” he asks.

Rey takes a sip of caf before she says, “I like your shirt.”

“It’s the only thing I feel comfortable in,” Kylo confesses.

There’s a sparkle in Rey’s eyes and she says, “It looks good on you. And it should - I bought it for you.”

“Oh.”

He sits on the sofa next to Rey, though at the opposite end. It’s a small sofa, and rather low to the ground; he looks lanky and awkward, his knees sticking out and his elbows nudging some cushion or other as he brings the cup to his lips. Absentmindedly, he thinks to himself that the Resistance makes much better caf than the First Order.

“Doctor Kalonia says that to try to get my memory back, I should try to go through my daily routine,” Kylo says. 

It’s weird to him, sharing such personal details, like what his  _ doctor _ tells him to do, with a complete stranger. But he’s really, really trying to trust Rey - this woman who says she loves him but he’s never met before. 

He can see why he might have fallen for her - but what’s the trade-off? He had every luxury with the First Order. Here, he’s… living the same life he had when he was a child, only with more responsibilities, presumably. Nobody’s asked him to fulfill any tasks, so he’s not sure what he does with the Resistance.

“She’d know best,” Rey says, watching Kylo curiously.

“So…” he begins awkwardly. “What’s my daily routine?”

Rey smiles. He’s trying and that gives her such hope. That hope, of course, irritates Kylo. He controls his temper, for now, and waits for Rey to answer. “Well,” she begins. “You train a lot during the day. You go by yourself in the morning, and I don’t really know what you do, but I can show you where it is.” Rey sits up on the sofa, crossing her legs as she continues explaining, “We have lunch with Finn and Poe and some of the other pilots, and then you usually spend some time on the bridge with your mom. Then in the afternoons, you and I spar. Dinner comes after that, and then… whatever we want. Sometimes we go for a flight, just for fun. Some days are really tiring so you or I or both of us has a bath or goes to bed early. Other nights, we have dates on base or nearby on the planet, and…”

“Okay, so we’re creepy and domestic, I get it.” 

Rey presses her mouth shut, lips pursed. She tries in vain to push away the painful twinge in her heart. “Sorry. I hadn’t meant to upset you,” she frowns. “It’s just - what we do. Routine. Like you asked.”

“Well, maybe parts of the routine will need to change,” Kylo snaps.

Sighing, Rey sets her cup of caf aside and asks, “What parts do you want to change?”

Kylo’s expression is dark and moody, and he doesn’t answer her at first. The answer is obvious, and he resents the fact that she’s trying to make him say it. Rey doesn’t press the issue, for now. “So, your bag is in the corner, by the door,” she explains. “You can go train by yourself, or get familiarized with the base if you want. I could show you around, or -”

“What do  _ you _ usually do?” he asks.

Rey pauses. “Me?”

“Yes.” 

She’s quiet for a moment. Suddenly, when having to explain her own routine to him, she realizes that he doesn’t know her, that he’s not as caring as she remembers - and it worries her for a moment because she knows she needs to tell the truth, even if it’s embarrassing.

“Well, I usually get up early to meditate, and when I come back here, you’ve made caf and something to eat for breakfast - for both of us. Then in the mornings, I study with Poe and Threepio. They’re um... teaching me to read and write,” she explains, avoiding his eyes. That’s the part she’s most embarrassed about. “Then we all have lunch together. After that, I sometimes join you on the bridge, but most of the time I’m in the hangar, helping Finn and Poe and the other pilots and technicians with whatever repairs need to be done. Then we spar.” Rey doesn’t mention what they do after that, not after how he’d reacted the first time. “Then we’re home for the night,” she finishes vaguely.

Kylo studies Rey for a moment. “We haven’t had any -” he waves his hand between them, “There are no kids, right?”

Rey snorts. “No,” she shakes her head. “You’d know, if we had. They’d have been there when you first woke up.” He glares at her darkly and her expression fades. She takes a deep breath and says, “We talked about it just once, but you said you didn’t want to have children. You said that the Skywalker blood was nothing but trouble.”

“It’s true.”

Rey is quiet. Kylo takes this to mean that she’s unhappy with the way that particular conversation went, so he says, “You weren’t happy with my answer.”

She glances up at him. Her thumb brushes her wedding band and she says, “I wasn’t surprised.” It feels like a mistake, having this conversation with him when he’s still so volatile. Yet, she can’t stop herself.

“Maybe if you want children, this accident was for the best, then,” he says.

“No,” Rey replies firmly. “Don’t say that.” She shakes her head. After a sigh, she says, “I’d been thinking about one day, suggesting adoption instead.”

“Because you were an orphan.”

“Exactly.”

He studies Rey very closely. There are still so many questions in his head, so much he wishes he knew. He wants answers, yet yearns for the safe familiarity of the  _ Finalizer _ . 

Instead of continuing the conversation, Kylo looks at the time. “I think you said you have your lesson now?”

Rey takes a sip of her caf and nods. That’s the end of that, then.

“Do you need help finding the training room?” she asks. “I can show you - it’s on my way.”

If there’s one thing Kylo dislikes more than this odd truce he’s found with the Resistance, it’s how helpless he feels on their base. However, working out and getting his mind off of the situation sounds like something worth putting his pride aside for. He nods, and Rey stands to lead him out the door, her own bag slung over her shoulder. He catches a glimpse of what’s inside, the children’s books and messy handwriting, and he can feel her unease radiating from her.

Rey barely says two words to him when she leaves him by a door to a near empty room; there are a few weights inside, things he can lift or shove to get his strength back. She does, however, give him the smallest of smiles, one filled to the brim with hope that perhaps, by going back to his daily routine, he’ll get his memories back. 

“I’ll see you at lunch?” she asks hopefully.

He nods again, not realizing that he has no idea where the mess hall is until Rey has walked down the corridor and turned out of sight. 

In the training room, things feel a little more normal. If Kylo closes his eyes and ignores the way everything is a little dusty and grimy and  _ old _ , it almost feels like he’s back on the  _ Finalizer _ . He finds a metal rod propped up against the wall, suspiciously the same size as a lightsaber. There’s the smallest flash of  _ something _ in his head, reassuring him that no, it would not be stupid to pick it up and work through some sparring forms with the rod.

So, he works on it some more, swinging his arms around, the rod making a swift  _ swoosh! _ through the air as he twists and turns. A sheen of sweat gathers on his brow, over his arms, and Kylo loses track of time. This - it feels good. Familiar. It’s the most comfortable he’s been in his own skin since waking up from the accident.

Now if only everything else felt this familiar.

He’s interrupted by the beeping of a droid and a heavy, repetitive thudding on the door. Annoyed, Kylo tosses the metal rod aside with a growl and walks to the door. He whips it open, prepared to shout at whatever droid has interrupted him, but it’s breezing past his calves before he can stop the thing.

It’s the same droid from before - BB-8, Rey had called it - and he’s whirring into the room without invitation, excited about something. 

He beeps to Ben in an excited, high-pitched code.  _ [More footage found of Friend Ben and Friend Rey!] _

Without waiting for permission, BB-8 begins to project more footage of Ben and Rey, and although he’d like to look away, Kylo finds that he can’t.

Somehow, he’s curious about this mysterious relationship. How he became so enthralled with a woman when he’d sworn not to make the same mistakes as his grandfather. No attachments meant no weaknesses. No weaknesses meant no fall from power.

_ “You’re going to get us in trouble!” _

There’s sound with this recording, and it’s more vivid - clearer. This must have come from the security cameras.

_ The hallways are dark but he can make out the shadows of the two of them. Ben has Rey pressed up against the wall, one of her legs wrapped up around his waist as best she can manage. Her fingers tangle in his hair and his face is buried in her neck. _

Kylo pales. If the droid got his hands on this footage, then that means someone else could, too. Someone who could humiliate him with it.

_ “Ben,” Rey whispers, trying to capture his attention. _

_ He laughs as he leans away from her shoulder, choosing instead to steal another kiss from her lips. _

Ben looks closely at the footage, trying to figure out when this happened. He doesn’t see any jewelry on Rey’s hand and surmises the footage was from before they married. Sometime between when he apparently killed his Master and the accident.

_ Ben presses her up against the wall with both of Rey’s legs now wrapped unabashedly around his waist. She holds him close, arms steady and sure around his shoulders. The kiss breaks and he leans his forehead to hers. His hair falls in the way, but the sound of Rey’s laughter is still audible on the footage. _

_ “Ben,” she says, her voice becoming breathy and a little desperate. “Ben - I want - ” _

_ “Hmm?” he asks, leaning in again to kiss her neck. _

_ “Ben,” Rey breathes, one hand tangling in his dark hair. _

_ He leans away, focusing his full attention on her. His smile fades as he senses her nervousness, her slight hesitation. “Ben…” she trails off. Rey gently cradles his face in her hands and looks into his eyes. The moment grows serious, serene. “I want you. Please.” Her cheeks turn crimson. Ben presses her a little tighter to the wall at her statement. _

_ She pulls him impossibly closer with her legs before she begs, “Take me to bed.” _

Kylo watches the projection, wondering how he could have possibly reacted to that. The prospect of someone saying those words to him - of someone feeling affectionate towards him - it blows his mind. He can’t fathom a life in which someone would feel such a thing for him.

Kylo’s heart is thundering in his chest as he watches. He’s never felt anything like it - the longing for something like that. The emptiness, knowing he’s experienced it, but lost all recollection of it. 

The droid shuts off the projection and beeps to Kylo again, asking if it should continue looking for more footage of the two of them. Kylo nods without thinking about it. It’s a bad idea, he knows, but now his curiosity is piqued and he really wants to know what else is out there. How he fell for someone like Rey.

Finding her attractive is easy. Finding himself a viable candidate for a woman like her - that’s something he can’t fathom. 

Hunger gurgles in his stomach and he wonders if he’d missed lunch with Rey. She’s probably disappointed and likely worried - but she hasn’t come to find him, so he perhaps he still has time to get to the mess hall.

The droid leads him down the hallway, like he knows Kylo’s routine or something, and that causes anger to flare within him. When a droid knows more about himself than he does, it irritates him to no end. C-3PO had done the same when Ben was a child, and he’d hated it.

So, Kylo purposely ignores BB-8 as he rolls down the corridor and around a corner. Kylo knows he should follow - he’s so damn hungry - but he’s feeling more defiant than famished so he purposely turns in the opposite direction as the droid. He half expects the droid to come back for him, but it doesn’t.

Another couple of turns take him to someplace wholly unfamiliar, and Kylo’s defiance turns to dread. Now he’s got to summon the courage to ask someone from the  _ Resistance _ for help, or he’s going to have to try to retrace his steps. Which would be easier if he’d been paying attention and if these corridors didn’t look so similar.

Kylo sighs and looks around. The sheen of sweat on his bare skin starts to fade and as it does, he grows colder. A shiver shoots down his spine and suddenly he thinks that his pride may have to be set aside so he can at least find his room.

Lost and confused, Kylo wanders up the hallway, and then back down. Everything looks the same - all the doors are closed, and there are no people in the hallways. He thinks he’s found another corridor of private rooms, where everyone sleeps. The busy, bustling areas are elsewhere in the Resistance bunker. It’s a mess, and he’s completely out of his element. He’s  _ lost _ .

Turning around a corner, Kylo bumps right into a heavy, solid form. “Hey, watch where you’re -!” the man shouts.

Kylo steps back, looking up at whoever it was he bumped into, the person about to shout at him for not being more careful.

“Oh. Ben. Hey.”

His face looks vaguely familiar, and Kylo gets the sinking feeling that he should know who this is. The look in the man’s dark eyes says that the two of them never really got along. Either that, or they really are strangers. But the guy knows his name - his  _ real  _ name - which leaves Kylo feeling even more confused.

“Who are you?” he asks.

This guy isn’t very old - probably the same age as Rey, if Kylo had to guess - but he looks bewildered and a little hurt at the question.

“Finn,” the man replies. “Rey’s friend.”

“Right,” Kylo says. He grits his teeth and looks around.

“Are you lost?” Finn asks.

Kylo’s glare is all the answer Finn needs. “I was wondering why you ditched Rey at lunch,” he explains, starting to ramble as he says, “You never miss lunch with her.”

“I don’t know this place,” Kylo says flatly.

“Yeah, so I’ve heard,” Finn replies. There’s a bitterness in his tone that Kylo doesn’t know the explanation behind. Something bad went down between them. He wonders if Finn had feelings for Rey, if that’s what it was. “Look - I know you had that accident and all, but you should try a little harder to care. Most people here may trust you know, but a few of us find it hard to believe you’re not that monster from the First Order. But Rey is loved by everyone around here - except for apparently  _ you _ now - so we deal with it. But she loves you. At least  _ try _ to love her back.”

“I understand how much everyone cares about her,” Kylo says tersely. He’s trying very hard to keep his temper under control.

“So what’s the problem?” Finn asks. He looks angry, and Kylo can sense it.

Kylo doesn’t want to have this conversation with Finn. Something about him is… off. Kylo can tell they have a history, but has no idea what it is. “Why did you let me near her?” he asks finally, through gritted teeth.

The tension in Finn’s shoulders disappears and confusion crosses his face. “What?” he asks.

“You heard me,” Kylo says flatly. “If you all care about her and despise me, then why did you let me near her?”

Finn shakes his head. “It wasn’t that easy,” he says. “Rey has a mind of her own. Besides, we don’t even know how you two met. All of a sudden you were on the Resistance base and she was always at your side and she looked so  _ happy _ .”

“There is so much more happening that nobody is telling me,” Kylo says angrily.

“What do you want me to say?” Finn asks, a little angry that Kylo wasn’t satisfied with the answer he’d given. “That you two met because you kidnapped her? Because you tried to get a map from her head?” Finn’s on a roll now, and he can’t make the words stop. He doesn’t want to. He finds satisfaction in the anger flaring in Kylo’s eyes. “You sliced my back open in the forest on Starkiller, and then Rey got your face pretty good,” he gestures to Kylo’s face. “We didn’t even know you’d survived because Poe blew up Starkiller as we were flying away in the Falcon. Then she went off to train with Luke, and you tried to fight him but he like, disappeared or something, and then you show up on base.”

There’s a lot for Kylo to unpack in what Kylo just said. “Poe? Poe Dameron?” he asks first. Finn nods. Kylo hasn’t seen him in years. Many, many years. “And you’re telling me that Starkiller was built  _ and _ destroyed in the past five years?” Finn nods again. “And Skywalker?”

“He’s gone,” Finn says.

“And Rey did this to me?” he asks, pointing to his face.

Finn sighs. “Yes.”

He stands, now without judgment on his face, watching as Kylo grapples with the piles of information he’s been given. There’s a lot to take in - he’s alarmed, and angry, and mostly confused. Confusion seems to be his natural state these days.

Across base, Rey could sense the confusion and anger, and she’s done waiting for Kylo to find his way. She’d given him space, getting the feeling that Kylo wanted to try to be independent. His pride was keeping him from asking for help, and she wanted to give him a chance to try. But this was too much. He needed her.

It doesn’t take her long to find them, standing in the corridor glaring at each other. Just as she does, she hears Kylo ask, “If she loves me, then why would she hurt me?”

“She didn’t always love you,” Finn growls. “If you ask me, I think you did something to her. But she says you changed.”

Rey watches as Kylo seems to reach to his side where his lightsaber used to live. It’s not there, and it pains her to see him grapple with the idea that his weapon is gone and he has no defense. “Ben,” Rey says firmly.

He spins around when he hears her, and both men look ashen when they realize they’ve been caught. Rey narrows her eyes at both of them, hands on her hips. Finn visibly slumps, afraid of what is going to happen now that Rey heard what he’d said. “Finn, go home,” Rey says firmly through gritted teeth. He leaves, opening his mouth like he’s about to speak before he gives up on that and leaves.

Rey looks at Kylo, who looks equal parts livid and embarrassed. “I hurt you before I knew you,” Rey says. “I judged you unfairly and I’m always going to have to deal with that fact. But don’t listen to him, okay? I love you. You  _ saved me _ . I’m always going to care about you, no matter what.”

“Stop  _ saying that! _ ” he growls. 

Rey pushes through the overwhelming pain she gets every time she hears him reject her love and admiration and says, “Come on. I’m taking you back to our rooms.”

She turns on her heel and stomps down the corridor, brow furrowed. She’s torn between wanting to scream and wanting to cry, because there’s a lot of emotions she has to work through and she’s not sure she has the capacity for that, at this point. Rey finds slight comfort in knowing that he’s walking behind her, the thud of his footsteps steady and unfading. But yet she’s also filled with this new desire to get as far away from him as she can so she can try to work through the feelings bubbling in her chest.

Rey opens the door to their quarters to let him in, but doesn’t follow. She gives him one last disappointed glance before turning around again, to leave. “Where are you going?” he asks lamely.

Sighing, Rey glances back. “I need some space,” she says softly. “To think. And so do you.”

The door closes behind her, leaving the image of Ben’s confused, anguished face burned into her mind.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Julia for beta'ing this chapter! <3 You are a gem.

“Look, Rey-” Poe begins. He looks over at her, and then back at his ship. They’re cleaning the outside of it, the hard work of rewiring bits of the hyperdrive done already. Together, the two made quick work of it. She’s been telling Poe about Ben’s temper and his attitude about the amnesia, and hopes he has some answers. “I gotta be honest, most pilots I know who get head injuries and amnesia usually get the memories back by now,” Poe says simply. Rey looks crestfallen, so Poe adds, “But I mean, it’s not like there’s no hope left. Maybe it’ll just take him longer.”

Rey looks desperately to Poe and asks, “Can you talk to him?”

Incredulously, Poe asks, “Me!?”

“You two were friends once, right?” Rey asks. “He actually remembers you. Maybe you could talk to him. Explain things.”

Poe sighs and sets down his rag. He settles down on the floor of the hangar and pats the spot next to him to get Rey to sit next to him. She does, watching him for some sort of answer. 

“He doesn’t want to talk to me, I know that already. That trust was broken a long time ago,” Poe says simply. “But I can maybe try to help you figure out ways to get through to him.”

“What do I do?” Rey begs. “I’ll do anything.”

Poe shrugs. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but here we go…” he takes a deep breath. “What turns him on?”

“What!?” Rey shrieks.

“I don’t  _ actually  _ want to know!” he shouts in defense. “I just think it’ll help!”

“How?” she asks, still shocked. Her cheeks are a bit pink from his question.

Poe shrugs. “I don’t know. Maybe if you do that, he’ll start to remember. If the touch is familiar… everything else will come back to him,” he says lamely.

Rey looks at Poe with wide eyes. “Are you telling me to sleep with him?”

“I mean -- we all know you have,” Poe says. “There’s footage and everything. Like, of the leading up to it stuff. This place is crawling with security cameras. Beebee-Ate found some when he was looking for proof for you to show to Kylo.” Rey’s face turns beet red, but Poe doesn’t relent. “He’s your husband, so yeah, sleep with him. He’s a guy, and he’s got urges. I bet even if he didn’t remember, he’d go along with it.”

Rey smacks Poe’s shoulder -  _ hard _ .

“Ow!” Poe shouts. “He’s your husband! It’s not weird!”

“It’s weird if he doesn’t remember me!” Rey protests.

Poe rolls his eyes. “You’re pretty. You know it, I know it, and Kylo Ren knows it,” Poe says simply. “Just - give it a try. Do whatever turns him on. And yeah, no, actually, don’t tell me what that thing is because I will _ never _ be able to look him in the eye again.”

“You don’t look him in the eye anyway,” Rey says blankly.

“I don’t want to know,” Poe says, shaking his head. “I changed my mind.”

Deciding to try to get back at Poe a little, she keeps pressing the matter. “It’s nothing  _ too _ dirty,” she says, smirking.

“Hey, no! Don’t do that!” Poe protests. “I take it back!”

Rey reaches over and tugs at Poe’s curls as she says, “Just a little bit of this.” 

“Oh my god no, please,” Poe begs.

Rey’s laughter is melodic and lighthearted. “So you’re saying I should just go kiss him,  _ pull his hair _ ,” she pulls Poe’s hair again for emphasis, “and maybe he’ll remember?”

Poe swats Rey’s hand away and says, “I regret everything about this conversation. Get out of here!” He nudges her shoulder playfully. “I can’t believe you told me. You  _ actually _ told me.”

“You asked!” Rey protests, elbowing him back.

“I changed my mind!” Poe laughs.

Rey’s laughter dies down, but her smile never fades. She’d gotten so wrapped up in trying to help Ben get his memories back that she’d neglected to spend time with her other friends. Poe has been like an older brother to her, ever since they met after she moved the rocks on Crait and saved the Resistance. Even in her sadness, he’s always been there for her. 

She feels better about things, even if only just for a few minutes, and that’s priceless. Lost in her thoughts, Rey is snapped back to reality by Poe’s voice.

“Really, though? Pulling hair is his…  _ thing _ ?”

Rey smacks the back of Poe’s head and decides the conversation is now officially over.

\---

It’s been a long while since Rey has felt quite this nervous. She knows what she needs to do - or what she  _ wants _ to do, rather. Poe’s idea hadn’t been the worst she’d ever heard. Admittedly, Rey misses Ben’s touch, misses being close and intimate with him. She had never known how good it was to be around people and to feel their skin upon hers until she’d met Ben. Before that, physical contact was equated to threat in her head, and it took a while to recondition that part of her brain.

And now - maybe part of her sadness and loneliness is because of this. She doesn’t get to curl up at Ben’s side at night while they sleep. They don’t have the occasional bath together, or lie on the sofa watching a holovid, and -  _ maker _ what she misses the most is when he’d press her up against the wall and kiss her hard, wiping her whole mind blank.

So, Rey resolves that even if it doesn’t get his memories back, she wants to try to initiate some sort of physical contact with Ben. Secretly, she hopes it works, but is realistic in thinking that it probably won’t.

Relief sweeps through Rey when she sees Ben in their quarters, sitting on the sofa reading a book. He looks peaceful, and this is a great comfort to her. When she steps into the room, he looks up, mild surprise on his face that she’s back in the rooms. “Hi,” she says softly.

They haven’t been face to face since the incident the day before, where she’d caught him and Finn shouting at each other in the corridor. Ben’s voice is low, but not hesitant as he replies, “Hello.”

Slowly, she begins to cross the room towards him. As she does, she asks, “How was your day?”

“Fine,” he replies automatically. “I trained, and then I came back here.”

Rey nods. “That’s good.” She wants to ask if he’s gotten any memories back, but can tell that he hasn’t. If he had, he would have said something. 

Very gently, she lowers herself onto the sofa next to him, kneeling to face him. One of her arms rests on the back of the sofa, so close that she could touch him, but she won’t - not yet. He watches her, his big dark eyes conveying his confusion, his mistrust. “Can I try something?” she asks gently.

Rey is already so close to him on the couch; he can smell her - the slight hint of oil from the hangar, but something sweet, too, like the muja fruit they were served in the mess hall that day. Her eyes are big and earnest, and Kylo is frozen in place. Though he knows he’s been this close with her before, he can’t recall it, so it’s all brand new all over again.

He nods and swallows hard, trying not to be nervous. This is Rey - Rey, who’s been nothing but pure and kind to him while he’s been here. Yet the guilt of betraying his master, of breaking the rules, it’s still there, bubbling within him.

But all of that disappears when Rey presses her mouth gently to his. She’s slow and hesitant, taking her time so as to not spook him. Kylo feels dumb all of a sudden, like he’s grown extra limbs and doesn’t know what to do with any of them. He wants to touch her, he wants to feel the warmth of her body beneath his fingertips, but he’s wearing stupid gloves and she’s already  _ so close _ . 

Rey leans a little closer, her arm wrapping around his shoulder. She adjusts her mouth against his ever so slightly and he feels her tongue dart out against his lower lip for just a second. Kylo’s brain finally catches up with the situation, and he rests one of his gloved hands on her hip. 

This gives Rey confidence, and slowly she breaks the kiss and locks eyes with Kylo. He watches her, his mouth gaped open just slightly, as she lifts one leg to shift so she’s on his lap, straddling him. He can see her chest heaving with each nervous breath, and there’s a flush on her cheeks as she looks earnestly at him and asks, “Is this okay?”

He nods, both hands gripping her hips, wordlessly begging her for more contact. A shimmer of hope sparkles in her eyes as she leans in, kissing him again. That hope doesn’t bother him this time. His hands hold her hips and he lets his tongue glide gently over her lower lip for just a second. He can taste the fruit she’d eaten earlier on her mouth, mixed with the taste of Rey - something totally unfamiliar and yet it gives him such comfort.

Rey’s arms are both wrapped around his shoulders and she’s pulling herself as close to him as she can possibly get. She whimpers into the kiss, relief flooding her when Kylo doesn’t push her away, when he lets this happen - when he kisses her back with such fervor. It gives Rey the push of confidence she needs.

Her fingers tangle in his hair, and as she scoots a little closer to him upon his lap, she takes hold of his hair and tugs, just like she’s done with him so many times before.

Suddenly, the mood in the room shifts from sexy to pure panic. Rey soars across the room, the wind knocked out of her as she hits the wall on the opposite side with a  _ thud _ . Kylo’s eyes are wide and frantic, and he’s on his feet, alert.

Rey feels tears welling in her eyes. That had most definitely  _ not _ gone according to plan. Apparently, for this Kylo, that gesture wasn’t sexy - it triggered panic and fear. She doesn’t know why, and now she’s afraid to ask.

She must look a sight, because when his gaze finds her, he gets an incredibly conflicted look in his eyes. Rey’s hands tremble and she cowers, not standing up from where she lay splayed on the floor, the strength of his throw still frightening her. The last time he’d tossed her around like that was on Starkiller, before they’d fought for the first time.

“I’m sorry,” Rey says through her tears. She’s shaking, and she doesn’t make a single move to get closer to Kylo. She can stand, though, and she stays as far away from him as possible as she does.

It hits her suddenly that this isn’t the man she’d married. That the man standing in front of her is who he was - who he may now forever be. She can’t just trigger the memories to come back, though she can trigger the bad ones to the surface as she had done. All hope within her that she’ll be able to bring him back is quickly disappearing. Now she must try to wrap her head around the fact that she’s lost her husband, yet he’s here, in plain sight. And he may leave and go back to doing terrible, horrible things to the galaxy if she can’t convince him to try to fall in love again.

“Rey -” he begins. He takes a step closer to her, but she shakes her head and holds out her hand, a silent plea for him to not move any closer. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. Kylo feels frantic, guilty - she hadn’t meant to hurt him and  _ he knows it _ . But it’s too late. “I’m sorry.”

“I have to go,” she whispers before scrambling towards the door.

Kylo watches her leave, chest heavy and aching. He’d felt her pain, but worse - he’d felt all hope she had left of saving him disappear with his one frantic, instinctive move.

She’d given up on him, even after he’d tried so hard to push past his reservations and try to trust her. He would have to try harder now, or he was going to have to leave.

\---

Rey doesn’t speak as she cleans one of the many X-wings in the hangar on the Resistance base. She needs to get out of her own head. After rewiring most of the censor system on this particular ship, Rey started wiping the grease off the front nose cone. Poe watches as Rey almost viciously scrubs at the machine, something clearly on her mind.

“What’s up with you?” he asks finally.

He’d been waiting for the right moment all afternoon, but clearly there would be no “right” moment. Rey was in a sour mood and there was no changing that, apparently. Rey doesn’t hear him at first, until he purposely drops a wrench. The clang makes her jump out of her skin and she looks over in alarm. “What?” she asks.

“I asked you what’s up,” Poe repeats. “You seem… off.”

Rey sighs and goes back to scrubbing the ship. “I’m always off these days,” she says softly. She sounds disappointed.

“And things with Kylo?” Poe prods.

Putting down the rag, Rey realizes there is no way to avoid this conversation. “I appreciate the advice, but it didn’t work,” Rey says simply. She doesn’t want him to feel guilty that she’s now got a rather smart bruise on her hip from being tossed across the room. Poe didn’t know that Kylo would react the way he did.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” replies Poe earnestly. He steps a little closer to Rey to try to capture her full attention. “So what’s the next plan?”

Rey frowns, her brow furrowed up. She hadn’t even thought about that yet. She’s spent far too long trying to remind herself that Kylo isn’t the enemy, that he’d hurt her on instinct, but not on purpose. “I don’t know,” she confesses. “I’m running out of ideas.”

“You’re not giving up hope, are you?” Poe wonders.

“Would it be so bad if I was?” Rey asks softly. “Poe - my parents abandoned me, and that hurt enough. But falling in love with someone and having them forget you, but still stand right in front of you -” Rey’s lower lip trembles as she tries to continue speaking through her sadness. “It’s worse. It’s so much worse.”

Her tears strike something in Poe, and he reaches out for Rey, wrapping his arms around her shoulders protectively. “Hey, no, it’ll be okay,” he insists. He pats her shoulder, unsure if his words are really true. He’s honestly got no idea how this stuff works, or if Kylo will get his memories back. But he  _ does _ know that Rey is his friend, like a sister to him, and she’s been through a lot. She deserves happiness, and he’ll do anything he can to help make that happen. “He’s going to remember you.”

Rey cries softly into Poe’s shoulder, sadness overwhelming her. It swirls around her and projects throughout the base. 

In the quiet solitude of their quarters, Kylo feels Rey’s pain. He looks up and around, and the ache is nearly unbearable. He knows without a doubt that Rey is hurting.

His feet carry him to the hangar without thought; he’s moving on instinct, hyper-aware of Rey’s sadness. When he turns the corner and sees Rey crying into Dameron’s stupid jacket, his concern turns to rage. Even though he’s still trying to wrap his mind around being married to Rey, he feels anger seeing her near anyone else. 

“Hey, look,” Poe whispers to Rey, noticing Kylo walking towards them angrily.

Rey turns her head, still resting it upon Poe’s shoulder, to see what he’s gesturing towards. As soon as Kylo sees the sadness, but yet the spark of hope now re-lit in her eyes at the sight of him, he slows his gait. 

“Dameron,” Kylo says blankly.

“Solo,” replies Poe.

They share one long, stern gaze, before Rey slowly separates herself from Poe. She dabs at her eyes and tries so hard not to look like she was just bawling into her friend’s shoulder. It’s really quite selfish of her, she thinks, to cry over something when she’s not even the victim in this situation. Kylo is the one who lost his memories, not Rey. If anyone is the victim, it’s him.

She knows that Poe and Kylo have a history that she’s never been privy to, and she wants so desperately to ask now. But she keeps her mouth closed, instead choosing to step gingerly towards Kylo. 

Rey knows better than to ask if he got his memories back. She knows that it’s too late for that, most likely. She also hopes that if he  _ had _ gotten them back, he’d have said so already. 

“Are you okay?” Kylo asks finally.

Nodding, Rey replies, “Yes.”

Kylo looks up at Poe, who frowns and shakes his head no from where he stands behind Rey. He’s known his whole life, practically, that Ben Solo doesn’t like to be lied to. He doesn’t like when people treat him like he’s too fragile to know the truth. To Poe, there’s something in Kylo’s eyes that looks an awful lot like gratitude.

“Did I hurt you yesterday?” Kylo asks.

Poe looks quickly to Rey, wondering just what Kylo was talking about.

“No,” Rey says. “I’m alright, thank you.” She doesn’t want to tell him about the bruise.

The whole situation is incredibly awkward. Poe wants to crawl out of his skin to get away from the situation. It now feels like he’s intruding upon a moment he shouldn’t be; that Kylo and Rey need their privacy. But yet he wonders why Kylo would be asking if she was hurt, why there’d be any possibility of him hurting her.

“Can we talk?” Kylo asks, before glancing over Rey’s shoulder to Poe as he adds, “Alone?”

Rey looks behind her to Poe, nodding to him that she’ll be alright. Poe stuffs the rags they were using in an empty bin nearby before quickly leaving the hangar. He doesn’t trust Kylo, but he trusts Rey. And if he’s got BB-8 watching security footage now, well - nobody needs to know that.

Rey looks to Kylo, curious as to what he might want to talk about. She hasn’t seen him since he tossed her against the wall, but his concern that he’d hurt her bodes well. Rey feels hopeful again, but just ever so slightly. Her walls are up, and she’s not going to give in quite as easily as she might have. Now that she knows it’s a very real possibility that she could be hurt in her efforts to get Kylo back, she must be more careful.

“I was thinking,” Kylo begins awkwardly. Rey watches him, quietly waiting to hear what he has to say. “You should show me our history.”

“How?” Rey asks. “I’ve already told you…”

“Take me to these places. Take me to Jakku, and to Takodana. You said we saw each other in these places, right?”

Rey shakes her head. “No, we never saw each other on Jakku. I think you were there, at one point, because Poe was trying to get something from someone there, but… we never crossed paths,” Rey explains. “We did on Takodana, though. That’s where you took me.”

“Kidnapped you.”

Rey’s expression falls. “Yeah.”

The room is deadly silent, nothing but the hum of an air vent system somewhere in the hangar to interrupt their silence. “I don’t need you to protect me from the things I did,” Kylo says firmly. “I need you to be honest with me.”

Rey nods. “Right,” she agrees. “I know. I’m sorry.” She looks up at him earnestly, hoping he knows she means it.

Kylo holds out his hand, and Rey’s heart twists. He likely has no idea the significance of such a gesture - can’t fathom that it used to be their special thing. Now, it’s just a gesture - plain and simple. “Show me these places?” he asks.

Taking a deep breath, Rey nods and takes his hand. She’s going to show him everything - more, even - and hope that it works.


	7. Chapter 7

Kylo can feel the nervousness emanating from Rey as their ship touches down on Jakku. He’s under strict orders from Doctor Kalonia not to fly, so Rey’s been in control this whole time, though he was itching to be at the controls. He may have had a head injury, but he’s confident that he can fly a ship. Rey does the job anyway, and her hands tremble as she presses the button to lower the gangway so they can step out onto the sandy dunes of Jakku.

It’s sweltering hot, and right away Kylo regrets wearing the outfit he’d chosen before they left the Resistance base. Rey had warned him to wear something different, but he hadn’t listened. She now stands in the slight breeze of Jakku, her light linen clothing blowing in the breeze. “You wanted to see my life before all of this… here it is,” Rey says, gesturing vaguely around her.

There are broken down ships surrounding them, and a tent where there’s an ugly lump of a man handing out portions. Their ship is registered with the makeshift hangar bay, ensuring it won’t be ransacked for parts overnight, and Rey takes in the sight of all the familiar faces still struggling to make a living. Guilt pools in her belly, and she feels a bit sick with it. Though, that may also be the heat. 

“You lived here?” Kylo asks. There’s no judgment in his voice, though she does hear mild surprise.

“Out there,” Rey gestures to a nondescript hill made entirely of sand. “On the other side. Where nobody would bother me.”

“And this place?” he gestures to the tent with the fat man.

“That’s Unkar Plutt,” Rey explains. “I worked for him. Every day I’d search for something of value in one of these broken down ships or machines. If I was lucky, I’d get part of a portion. Then I’d take that home, eat it, and repeat the next day.”

“For years?” Kylo asks. He’s studying Rey with a close gaze. His eyes are narrowed and Rey can see pity in them. She doesn’t want his pity. She wants his understanding. 

“Since my parents left me here,” Rey explains. She sighs. “I think I was five or six. I’m not sure.”

Kylo is quiet. He may have greatly disliked his childhood, but nothing compares to the loneliness and solitude of a life of scavenging on Jakku. “Come on,” Rey says, turning to walk towards the hill she’d gestured to earlier. “If I’m lucky, they haven’t raided my home.”

Without a word, Kylo follows.

They trudge through the sand, up and over the hill, and he spots a broken down machine in the distance. It’s an AT-AT; he’d recognize it from anywhere. “You lived in  _ that _ ?” he asks.

Rey is quiet, and nods. She leads him through the little doorway she made for herself, and he crouches in behind her. As soon as he steps foot inside, he’s assaulted by memories that aren’t his own - sadness, longing, loneliness - and he sees those emotions etched in the wall, little lines showing him just how long she suffered in this place. The room is gloomy and rusted, but somehow it still emanates something wholly special - something very  _ Rey _ . 

He watches her walk around the space, drifting a finger across a wilted petal of a flower, and then her dishes, until her gaze finds the wall covered in tick marks. “I waited every day for my parents to come back for me,” she says solemnly, looking up at the marks on the wall. “I was so hopeful.”

“And now?”

Rey turns around, surprised by his question. “I had you,” she says. 

The past tense stings, make something uncomfortable and sad twist in Kylo’s chest. He can feel her emotions, the sadness she feels in unbearable magnitudes at the idea of no longer having Kylo in her life the way she used to.

“You were my family,” Rey continues, her voice soft. Her eyes are glassy and she avoids his gaze. “I sort of always knew they were never coming back, but I was still hopeful. Being with you made me forget all about that, though. I didn’t need that false hope anymore.” The words go unspoken, but Kylo knows what she’s thinking. She was a fool for being so hopeful the first time, so there’s no point in being hopeful now. It didn’t work out then, so…

“I’m sorry,” Kylo says finally.

He watches her closely to see her reaction. She looks up sharply, surprised by his words. Confusion crosses her features before her face relaxes and she says, “It’s not your fault.”

“Your friend Finn was right - I need to try harder,” Kylo says simply.

“Finn said that?” Rey asks.

Nodding, Kylo explains, “Yes. And I think he may be right.”

Rey snorts. “You never think he’s right.”

“What reason did I have for hating him?” Kylo wonders. He’s been curious ever since he first saw the man. Something about Finn felt familiar and strange all at the same time and he didn’t understand.

Rey wants desperately to lie, to try to pretend that what happened hadn’t actually happened. She wants to protect both men from animosity that Kylo can’t seem to remember. But… he’d just asked her to be honest with him. To tell him what he didn’t know so that he could hopefully, maybe, begin to get his memories back. 

With a heavy sigh, Rey explains, “He was a Stormtooper. In his first battle, here on Jakku, he didn’t shoot. After that, he helped Poe escape after you’d taken him captive, and now he’s defected to the Resistance. Obviously, as the man who was once in charge of him, you were angry. You never did forgive him, even after you came to us, too.”

There’s a lot to unpack there. Kylo knew how intense the Stormtrooper training was, how hard they worked to create a hive mind, a common set of rules so that nobody would defect. Yet Finn had broken through that and ended up with the Resistance. Now that he’s not in charge with the First Order, Kylo is more impressed than angry by such a feat. 

Rey can sense Kylo’s odd reaction, can see in his eyes the curious absence of anger. She raises an eyebrow and asks, “What are you thinking?”

Kylo shakes his head and looks away, but Rey doesn’t let things move on. She wants to know. Finally, Kylo says, “It takes incredible strength to break through the Stormtrooper conditioning.”

“I believe it,” Rey says with a nod. “But he did it. And you never forgave him for it.”

Kylo looks to Rey. “I’m impressed,” he tells her.

A flicker of a smile crosses Rey’s lips. “I’m not sure you should tell him that,” she says, bemused.

“Why not?” asks Kylo.

“He’d probably faint,” Rey says, unable to stifle her giggle. “I think he sort of likes your rivalry.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“Yes, well… he can be stubborn,” Rey concedes.

The room goes quiet again, Rey watching Kylo with a newfound curiosity. If he reacted this positively to something that used to anger him, what else could she tell him? What other things could he possibly learn and think nothing of now, when he used to get so angry?

“Can we leave this place?” Kylo asks finally, stopping Rey’s thoughts in a split second.

Rey looks up at him, shocked. “I - yes. Sure. Of course,” she nods.

“This isn’t your home anymore,” Kylo tells her with a confidence that makes Rey’s heart skip a beat. Even if he wouldn’t call their room together  _ home _ , at least he knows that their home isn’t here. “Grab whatever you’d like to keep, and then we’ll go. Then you’ll never have to come back to Jakku ever again.”

Rey nods and looks around, trying to decide if there’s anything worth keeping. She stuffs a few outfits in a rucksack, and as Kylo walks towards the exit of the AT-AT, of the most consistent home Rey ever knew, she hesitates. Rey drifts her fingers over the wilted petals of the lone flower she’d had one last time. It was the only sign of life in the universe that she’d known other than the people on Jakku - her rivals and her disgusting boss. 

Kylo stands in the doorway watching her, and he wonders if this was the closure she needed or if he just reopened the wounds of her past. He lets her take her time as her fingers drift over the plant, her feet slowly leading her towards the doorway. “It’s alright,” Kylo tells her.

“I know,” Rey nods. “After this… I don’t ever want to come back. This place isn’t home. It never was. It’s… abandonment. Loneliness. The worst years of my life.”

And somehow, of everything, that’s what Kylo can relate to most. Knowing a place should have been his home, but not feeling like it was. That’s how he feels with the Resistance, ever since waking up from this accident. He knows it’s not home, and in the mind he knows right now, it never was. Perhaps in this other timeline, the world he’d built with Rey, it was, but now… it’s not. And he doesn’t know how to grapple with that, still.

When his eyes meet Rey’s on the sand outside the AT-AT, there’s realization in her gaze. Like she finally understands how he’s felt since waking up. 

He doesn’t know she could see those thoughts in his head. She chooses not to tell him.

Now, she’ll just move forward with a different understanding of his situation, and hope that she can make it right.

She wants her husband back, but realizes now that she can’t just wait for the memories to come back. She needs an alternative plan, one for what happens if he never gets his memories. It aches to think about, but it’s quickly becoming her reality. And Rey would much rather have to make him fall in love with her all over again than lose him completely - especially now that she’s shared this broken, dark side of her past with him. 

\---

Rey sleeps on the ship after setting the coordinates and setting their course. Kylo can’t sleep; he’s too caught up thinking about everything Rey has shown him so far. She remembers almost to the rock in the ground where he kidnapped her on Takodana. Where they first met, first touched. It wasn’t a good memory, but it was part of their history.

To think that after doing such a thing, Kylo managed to find his way into her heart, he’s filled with much confusion. He’s still trying to connect the dots and figure out just where their paths diverged, where enemies turned to friends, and then to lovers.

The final destination on their trip is a planet Kylo knows very well: Naboo. The Naberrie Palace is shimmering as they make their descent into the public hangar nearby. For some reason, he feels a jumble of nerves in his chest, the feeling of anxiety that he doesn’t belong here, or something is going to go awry.

Or maybe it just means things are going to start making sense.

Rey is hesitant as she explains, “This is…” she glances away. “The last important place, for us.”

“We were married here,” he says simply.

“Yes,” Rey nods.

Kylo watches her closely, reading her every emotion. She’s scared, she’s nervous, but most of all she’s worried that all of this traveling will have been for naught. That he’s never going to remember, that he won’t stay, even after making such a long journey. He doesn’t know how to make it better - he wants her to understand that if he cannot remember, he cannot stay. There is nothing familiar or comfortable about being with the Resistance. It’s not what he knows.

Wanting to give her a full chance, though, he prompts, “I want you to show me everything.” Rey looks up sharply, surprised. Her hands still on the controls of the ship. “I’m not fragile. I can handle it.”

Kylo glances out the window and sees that they need to release the landing gear, but Rey seems to be frozen in place at his request. Gently, he reaches over to toggle the switch, his hand brushing hers. She’s cold. He feels an instinctual tug to try to warm her up, but resists.

When the ship lands, the gangway lowers and Rey rather shyly leads him into the hangar. “Hey, it’s the Solos!” shouts a man to their left. Rey smiles at him kindly; he doesn’t know their situation, and she doesn’t really want to explain it.

All the technicians in the shop behind the man shout and wave, and Rey waves back. She glances back at Kylo, who looks confused, but waved with her. “Why do they know us?” he asks.

Rey blushes. “Well… when we first landed here, we had to repair the hyperdrive on the ship we used,” she explains. “Except, we already knew what we were going to do here, and in the enclosed space…”

“They caught us?” he asks in shock.

“No,” Rey shakes her head. “But they heard everything.”

Kylo looks annoyed. “And now they’re our friends?” he asks.

“Not quite,” Rey says, leading him out of the hangar. “But we laughed it off and bought them some ale, so we have a truce, at least.”

They walk down the street, Kylo gazing around in surprise that nobody is staring at them, wondering what he’s doing there. He’s used to people cowering in fear at his presence. “Were we very... active?” he asks, not wanting to truly say it.

Rey’s whole face blushes crimson and she doesn’t answer.

Apparently they were.

“I’m sorry,” Rey says finally. “It must be very strange not remembering. Especially that.” Kylo raises an eyebrow, and Rey shyly looks up at him. “I just mean - I know you hadn’t… and I hadn’t… so it must be very odd to have someone remember your first time when you don’t.”

“Oh.”

Rey looks away, squinting in the sunlight as she avoids his eyes once more. The silence is suddenly  _ so _ awkward, and Rey wishes she hadn’t opened her mouth at all. All she’d been hoping to do was to empathize with him, to remind him that she understands his situation, how odd this must be for him. She didn’t mean to make things so weird, though.

“Was it okay?” he asks finally.

Surprised, Rey looks up quickly. Her brow furrows for a moment, but then she nods. “Yes,” she says. “It was… fast. Over quickly, I mean. For both of us. We were -”

“Each other’s first times?” Kylo supplies. Rey nods.

She takes a deep breath and says, “We just kept practicing. Learning what we liked and didn’t like. That sort of thing.” Rey is still blushing crimson and avoiding his gaze.

“And did it get better?” he wonders. He’s not sure where his curiosity is coming from.

Nodding, Rey says, “Yes. Much better. I always thought it was always good, but… you know what I mean.”

Kylo doesn’t, not really, but he nods anyway. He can tell she’s uncomfortable, and that it’s about time they finished their conversation on this topic. He knows, realistically, that their entire time on Naboo will be filled with memories for Rey - the most romantic ones, the ones of the most pivotal part of her life where she became a somebody - he gave her a name here. A family. And now he doesn’t remember.

He pushes himself to really, really try to remember.

Rey knows the place like the back of her hand, which surprises Kylo slightly. He hadn’t expected her to be quite so well versed; Naboo can often feel like a maze. Together, they get into a transporter that takes them to the Naberrie Palace. Rey walks the building like she knows it intimately, like she’d lived there, and… if this is where they’d stayed, that would make sense. It looks like the sort of place Rey would enjoy.

She leads him through the palace, to a beautiful balcony overlooking the lake, mountains in the distance. Everything is bright and vibrant - blues and greens, flowers dotting the field - it’s so picturesque it takes his breath away. When they stop at the railing, Ben looks to Rey. “Why are we here?” he asks.

Rey turns to face him, and waits until Ben copies. She reaches out for his hands and holds them in her own. Part of her really wishes that this sort of thing would trigger the memories back, but she can tell by the look in his eyes that it doesn’t. However, he holds sadness in his eyes, watching her, a sort of desperation in his face that says he’s  _ trying _ . He’s trying  _ so hard _ for this woman he doesn’t even remember.

“This is where we were married,” Rey says simply. “You and me, a marshal from the Senate. Right here, where your grandparents were married.” She chokes on her words before she adds, “We looked just like this. It wasn’t fancy, but we were happy.” Rey squeezes his hands. “This is where I promised to you that I’d always be there - that I’d love you at your best, and your worst. And that I would help you through anything you needed.” Her voice cracks as she says, “Like this accident.”

Kylo’s heart aches as he watches how hard Rey is trying to keep it together, to stay strong. She understands that he’s doing all he can to try to remember. Rey looks down at their hands - at her ring, at the absence of his - and she tries so hard to picture that scene in her head. When she’s got it, she tries to show it to Kylo. “Open your mind,” she whispers. “Try to look into mine. I can’t describe it, but…” Rey lets the scene replay over and over again.

_ Ben, holding her hands, not smiling, but joy sparkling in his eyes. He tried so hard to look strong and invincible, but Rey knew it was all for show. That she was his and he was hers and together, they had an indescribable amount of love between them. They were invincible. That’s how she felt.  _

That’s what she wanted him to see. Rey feels a flash of  _ something  _ at the edge of her mind again, like he’s there, but not quite. Whatever the trick was to this, she didn’t know it, and he couldn’t remember it. He squeezes her hands, desperate to see something, to be the man she remembers, to do the things he could do before the accident.

But it doesn’t work.

When Rey blinks her eyes open, Kylo is watching her. He looks pitifully at her, his eyes shining with unshed tears, the emotions he rarely let her see even when they were married. Rey steps closer to him, never releasing his hands. “It’s okay,” she whispers. She doesn’t feel a tear blink down her own cheek. “You’re trying. That’s all I could ask.”

“It’s not enough,” he says, shaking his head. “I can do more.”

“Maybe,” Rey agrees, “But you don’t have to. It’s alright.” Rey rubs her thumb over the back of his hand. “You’re here with me and that’s more than I thought I’d get with you last week. I thought you were going to leave me.” She looks so sad as she begs him, “I love you. Please don’t go.”

Kylo doesn’t speak. Rey reads his eyes, understands that he’s thinking of what could possibly happen after this. If he doesn’t remember - he wants to leave. He doesn’t want to be what he’s not,  _ who _ he’s not. Whatever hope is left in Rey’s expression disappears when she realizes that he still might leave. 

She feels an ache in her chest so mighty she nearly doubles over. It’s  _ so much _ to contend with, the thought of being abandoned again. At least the first time, with her parents, she’d been younger. With time, the ache had begun to ebb away. But now… with Ben… she’s not sure she can handle being abandoned by him. The man who gave her everything she’d ever hoped for - everything she never thought she’d get.

Rey looks away and drops her hands to her sides. 

“We should go,” Kylo says simply. “You’re upset.”  _ This isn’t working. _

Rey poorly attempts to blink back her tears, nodding as she allows Kylo to lead her back to the hangar. His hand rests gently at the back of her arm, guiding her as she puts her focus into not crying, rather than navigating their way back. 

The technicians shout at them, wave to them, but their cheers fall short when they see the emotions on Kylo and Rey’s faces. The couple leaves before the well-meaning staff ask them any questions. 

Kylo was right - she  _ is _ upset. And right now, all she needs in order to fix that sadness is for her husband to come back to her. He’d know what to do. He’d know what to say.

But now, he’s the stranger she met years before, and her heart breaks when she realizes fully that his memories are probably never coming back. Their last-ditch attempt to trigger the memories hadn’t worked.

She’s run out of things to try, to bring back what he’s forgotten. She doesn’t know what to do, now. It feels like the beginning of the end.


	8. Chapter 8

“Ren, we can take you back of course, but there will be rules in place.”

Kylo glares angrily at a projection of Hux. He’d been told to be in contact with him if he decided to leave the Resistance and return to the First Order - the  _ winning _ side. Hux was willing to let him back without punishment for treason, but only with conditions.

“I will not defect again,” Kylo says flatly. He’s tired of having to reassure Hux of that fact.

“But if you do,” continues Hux with a sickening grimace of a smile, “The punishment will be death. Is that understood?”

Kylo resents whoever put Hux in charge. As Supreme Leader, he’s sick with power, and he’s going to destroy the entire galaxy. It sounds terrible. But at least he’d feel at home - and that’s what he has to contend with. If he goes back, he can use the Force to guide himself through his last days before a battle inevitably kills him. Jedi don’t live forever - those who do, like Luke, are anomalies. The Jedi line will continue on with Rey, and she’ll bring balance back to the force with FN-2187 or Dameron or someone, and that will be that.

Good will reign.

All he has to do is go back to the First Order and live out his numbered days in peace. It’s what’s best for everyone, of that he is sure. The sooner he leaves, the sooner Rey can begin to move on and build herself the life she deserves - one in which he has no part, where there’s no risk of him ruining everything.

“We are traveling,” Hux says flatly. “If you mean what you say, you will meet us at Scaparus Port on Arkanis in five standard days. That is your only chance. If you miss it, you will be marked a traitor, and you will be taken captive by the First Order if we ever see you again.”

His words are firm and unforgiving, and Kylo does not speak for fear of lashing out and ruining his chance. The terms are harsh, yet fairer than he’d expected. He gives a curt nod and cuts off their communication. Kylo stands in silence for a few moments, mulling over his options.

Deep down, he knows that even reaching out to Hux was wrong, that it would hurt Rey immeasurably if she ever found out he was planning to go back. But at the same time, it’s dangerous to be an enemy of the First Order. It’s the biggest target anyone could ever have on their back. But he knows he’s lucky that Hux isn’t ordering his troops to kill upon sight, though the alternative isn’t much better.

“Don’t do it.”

Kylo spins on his heel, caught off guard. He’d thought he was alone.

Poe Dameron stands in the doorway, looking saddened. This is the first time in years that they’ve stood in the same room. The first time in even more years that they stood as equals, not captive and captor. 

“It’s none of your business.”

Poe stuffs his hands in the pockets of his new leather jacket and walks across the room towards Kylo. “It is, though,” Poe says. “Because, see, Rey’s happiness is what keeps a lot of people around here going.”

“She can learn to be happy without me.”

Poe scoffs. “That’s a little selfish, don’t you think?” 

Kylo narrows his eyes at Poe. “It’s what I’m best at.”

“No it’s not,” Poe shakes his head. He’s not intimidated by Kylo’s glare, by the darkness in his eyes. “You always wanted us to believe that, though. That you were avoiding us because you thought you were better than us. But we all knew you were lonely. That you weren’t happy at home. I know I was a part of that, too. I won’t apologize, but I can see it now, looking back.”

Poe’s words have more of an effect on Kylo than he’d like to admit. He balls his hands into fists at his sides, fingernails digging into the palms of his hands as he curses himself for leaving his gloves in his room. “Stop,” Kylo warns.

“No,” Poe says simply. “You were like a brother to me. Your mom took me in when my parents died and you shared  _ everything _ with me. Who knows you better than I do?”

“Rey, apparently.”

“Yeah, but who else?”

It strikes Kylo in that moment that Poe isn’t afraid of him. He never was. That’s why he’d been so cocky when he was captured on Jakku, when Kylo brutally forced his way into Poe’s mind, his memories. But yet, like the reckless kid Kylo remembered from his childhood, Poe was still there, standing in front of him, challenging him. 

“Look - I know it’s probably really weird for you,” Poe says. “That I’m in your life again, whether you like it or not, and I’m trying to give you advice.” He dares to take another step closer to Kylo. “And I’ll be honest - I was really skeptical when Rey brought you here, because I knew how you could hurt a person. Remember what you did to me when you arrested me on Jakku?” Kylo narrows his eyes. “But I remember that kid from Yavin, and that’s the kid it sounded like Rey found.  _ Ben _ . Not whoever Snoke turned you into.”

“You know nothing about me,” Kylo warns.

“I know you were the guy who was in charge of the army that brainwashed my boyfriend,” Poe says simply. “But I also know you were the kid who taught me how to fight because your uncle taught you before anyone ever taught me, even though I was older, and you wanted to make sure I could protect myself when you left. And you gave me that blanket of yours after my parents died, because you said it took away the nightmares.” 

Kylo looks ready to crawl out of his skin at the memories. “I’m not that kid anymore,” he snaps.

“No, you’re not,” Poe shakes his head. “But I caught a glimpse of him before the accident. I saw the way you looked at Rey. I saw you talking to your mom. You were smiling again. I thought that hey, you’d changed, and it was worth it to give you another chance.”

“And now I’ve ruined that chance,” Kylo supplies, anger dripping from his voice. He can feel crescent moon shapes from his fingernails almost sliced through his palms with the strength of his grip.

“You will if you go back to the First Order,” Poe says. “But I’m with Rey on this one. I’m not convinced you’re totally gone again.” He raises his eyebrows, that cocky look on his face. “You don’t have anything to go back to there. That pasty ginger guy hates you, Snoke is dead, and you’d be living out your days as a pawn in Hugs’s sick army. Here, you matter. You go on missions, you make Rey happy, you…” Poe hesitates before he says, “You have friends.”

Kylo is nearly shaking with rage, and Poe senses that it’s time he backed off. He holds up his hands as he takes a step back, showing that he’s no threat. “I’ll leave you be,” he says simply. “But think about it. Think about where you matter more - here, or there.” Poe looks sad, almost desperate as he pleads, “Just… please don’t go. Rey doesn’t want you to go, but… neither do I. And that should mean something to you.”

Poe leaves it at that, having said his piece. He leaves the room without a glance back, leaving Kylo to think about everything he’s been told, and everything he thought he knew.

And he has five days in which to make his final decision.

\---

Kylo goes back to his room, the whole place plunged in deep darkness. He can sense Rey nearby, knows she’s in the room somewhere. If he had to guess, he’d say she’s already in bed. She hadn’t waited up for him like she sometimes does. 

As it turns out, she’s curled up in bed, wearing some oversized long sleeve shirt -  _ his _ , she realizes - and is looking at an ancient leather-bound book. Curiously, he asks, “What are you reading?”

Rey looks up in surprise; she hadn’t heard him approach. She looks good like this - cozy in bed, her hair down in loose waves over her shoulders. He can see marks in her hair where the bands had kept it tied up in those three little buns during the day. She looks tired, but determined. When their eyes meet, Rey doesn’t fight her smile. He was being civil - that left her feeling hopeful. “One of the original Jedi texts.”

Kylo looks impressed. “Where did you get them?” he asks. He’d heard of them many times - mostly from his uncle, Luke - but had never seen them.

“Luke,” Rey replies simply. “Or. Well. The place he used to live. He doesn’t know I took them. If I hadn’t, he would have destroyed them.” 

“Really?” Kylo asks.

Rey nods. “Yes,” she says. “He said the Jedi Order needed to die. He refused to teach me anything, for the longest time.” 

Kylo looks broody and turns to his closet full of clothes. “He wasn’t a very good teacher,” he grumbles.

“He was alright,” Rey says with a coy smile. “You offered to teach me, too.”

Kylo turns around, his eyebrow raised in curiosity. “But you said no?” he asks.

Rey closes the book and sets it aside, on the table next to the bed. She crosses her legs and sits upright to tell him the story. “Well, not really,” she says. “But we were in the middle of a fight on a planet that was about to blow up, and technically still enemies.” 

“What fight? Who were we fighting?” he wonders.

“Each other,” Rey says. “I wasn’t going to listen to a word you said that day. I was so mad at you. You were hurting people I cared deeply for.” Rey frowns as she says, “You’d actually  _ just _ sliced open Finn’s back. So I fought you with everything I had. I’d never fought with a lightsaber before.” Rey looks up at him and adds, “It’s how you got that scar.”

Kylo walks to the bureau and gazes into the mirror. He lets a finger drift down over his scar and studies himself for a moment. “You’d never held a lightsaber, yet you managed to injure me this much?” he asks. His voice is softer, impressed almost.

“It was dumb luck,” Rey says. “But just before that, you’d told me I needed a teacher, and that you could teach me the ways of the Force.”

“Did I say the ways of the Force, or the ways of the Jedi?” he asks instantly.

Rey smiles knowingly. “You said the Force,” she replies. “It was always the Force, with you. Not light or dark, Jedi or Sith. Just… the Force.” Rey glances back over at the book and says, “That’s how it was in the beginning… I think. The language is a little outdated, but I think I understand fairly well. I’m trying. Threepio is helping me.” She looks up at Kylo and says, “In my lessons, we’ve been reading the books. To see if there’s a way we can use the Force to help you regain your memories.”

“Rey…”

“We haven’t found anything yet,” she says hopefully, “But we still have a few more books to look at.”

Kylo frowns. “I’m not getting the memories back,” he tells her firmly.

Rey looks up into his eyes, her expression faltering. She’d been  _ so hopeful _ , but she too knows that he’s right: the memories aren’t coming back. Now, the true question is whether he’ll stay or go. Rey thinks she already knows what the answer is.

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. 

Rey frowns; she doesn’t understand what that means. Is he sorry he can’t remember, or sorry because he’s leaving? Or both?

Her lower lip trembles, but she tries her best to stay strong, to remain optimistic that even in light of such terrible circumstances, they can make the best of this. “It’ll be okay,” she says, her voice airy and breathless, like she’s trying to hide the emotions written clear across her face. “It’s time. I just need to accept that your memory isn’t coming back.” She sits up a little straighter and looks at him earnestly. “I can do that.”

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” Kylo reminds her. He stands across the room from her, watching as this woman tries  _ so hard _ to be strong when she must be exhausted from it. “I’m tired of disappointing you.”

Rey’s expression grows pained. “You’re not disappointing me,” she insists, her eyes wet and full of heart-wrenching sadness that he’d think such a thing. “What are you going to do?” she asks. The tears well in her eyes and they sparkle in the moonlight outside their window. Her hands wring in the blankets and she’s afraid of the answer.

Through all the emotion in her eyes, Kylo can’t deny what it is he has to do. He cannot stay and be miserable just for the sake of someone else. He’s never been known for his empathy, or his kindness - they’re not things people expect from him. “I need to go,” he tells her.

Rey climbs out of bed. She pads barefoot across the room towards him, and he takes in the sight of her - her hair disheveled and messy, his shirt draping off one of her shoulders, the lack of trousers with his oversized shirt revealing just how comfortable she’d once been around him. The familiarity they had with each other. “Ben, please,” she begs, taking his hand. “Don’t go.”

“Stop calling me that,” he begs. He’s not angry, but he  _ is _ conflicted. She can see it in his eyes.

“Kylo, then,” Rey amends. She looks up at him pleadingly and squeezes his hand in both of hers. Their size difference is astonishingly clear to him in this moment. “Please don’t go. I love you. We can make this work. We can start a  _ new _ life.”

“Rey…”

He trails off. She knows what he’s going to say before the words ever leave his mouth.

“I can’t.”

Rey lets out a sob, loud and full of heartache. She blinks and tears spill down her cheeks. Her lips never move but Kylo curiously hears her voice, clear as day inside his head. 

_ I don’t know how to look at the man I love and tell myself to walk away. _

He slowly slides his hand away from hers, shaking his head slowly. This is what has to be done. Kylo Ren doesn’t belong with the Resistance, married to the Last Jedi. He is a monster, and he belongs with the First Order. He will bring destruction to the galaxy and then he will die, protecting what he thinks is right. What he’s  _ supposed  _ to think is right.

The pain in Rey’s eyes is too much to bear, so Kylo looks away.

Devastated, Rey leaves the room.

She trudges through the Resistance base, arms wrapped protectively around her torso, her head ducked down as her tears leave a trail on the floor below her bare feet. She hadn’t thought to grab a single thing from her room before she’d left; she needed to get out of there, to try to figure out some way to start moving on when it felt like her world had completely crumbled beneath her.

When they’d married, he’d vowed never to abandon her. He’d vowed she’d never be lonely again.

And now he was abandoning her, and she felt lonely even before he left the base.

Kylo didn’t know what he was doing, but it still broke Rey deeper than anything else ever had.

Rey knocks weakly at the familiar rusted orange door to Finn and Poe’s quarters, and they open it almost right away. It’s Poe, and as soon as he sees the look on Rey’s face, his shoulders slump. He’d tried.

Finn swoops in right away, his big, strong arms enveloping Rey in the warmest of hugs as she sobs into his shoulder. Her tears never seem to end, even as Finn sits them down on the sofa, as Poe brings over water in a desperate attempt to provide her with  _ something _ she might need. Rey cries and cries, nearly getting sick with all her grief and sadness.

That evening, after she composed herself enough to insist that  _ no _ , she didn’t need them to let her use their bed, that  _ yes _ , just give her a blanket and she’ll be fine on the sofa, they finally left her to rest.

Sleep doesn’t come to Rey, of course. Not when she feels like she lost a part of herself that evening, like there’s a gaping hole in her chest where Ben’s presence and light and love used to be. 

For the first time since their wedding, Rey slowly slides the ring off of her finger. She sets it on the table next to the sofa and looks at her hand, at the stripe of slightly more pale skin where the ring had once sat, where the sun didn’t touch because the ring was there instead, reminding her of their love. As painful as it is, Rey knows that this is what she needs to do. She needs to get used to being alone, again. To being abandoned by the one she loves. 

No matter how much it hurts.


	9. Chapter 9

Rey wakes the morning after she’d walked away from Ben with eyes filled with gunk from crying the night before, her nose a little sniffly and her limbs aching. It wasn’t that the sofa wasn’t comfortable; no, Rey just couldn’t sleep soundly knowing that Ben didn’t want her anymore. Memories of abandonment flood back to her once more and make her feel broken, like less of a person.

It’s hard for Rey to figure out how to move through her days without Ben there with her. She’d grown so used to his presence again. Her heart aches every time she thinks of him, every time she realizes that her relationship, the thing that gave her the family she’d always yearned for, was now gone.

She declines Finn’s invitation to join them in the mess hall for breakfast, saying instead that she should probably go change clothes and find some work to do instead. He frowns, but lets Rey go. 

Rey tries not to look around at the too-large quarters, at the space she and Ben used to share so happily once upon a time. She changes into some work clothes, just a tunic and some leggings she could cover in grease, and then retreats to the hangar.

It’s easy for Rey to distract herself there.

The machines give her something challenging enough that her mind drifts away from Ben, from the abandonment. She focuses on the wires and the circuits, on fixing the hyperdrive on a ship someone from the Resistance might need to defend them when the First Order makes their second rise to power.

Because that’s inevitable now, she feels.

Now that Kylo Ren will return to the First Order.

Rey wades in her disappointment and sadness as she fumbles with wrenches and tape, fixing everything she can, making little improvements if she feels the need. Finn manages to pull her away for lunch in the mess hall, but she doesn’t eat much of anything. Poe convinces her to eat half a bread roll and a piece of fruit, but that’s all she can manage without feeling like she’s going to vomit all over the table.

She looks so morose that it brings down the mood of the entire group; they don’t know what to say, don’t know how to help Rey through this.

It’s a relief to all of Rey’s friends when Leia approaches their table. “Rey,” Leia says softly. “Could I have a word?”

Leia is like a mother to her - technically speaking, she’s  _ is _ her mother, if only by law - but Rey still feels like she’s walking to her death as they walk through the base and to the bridge. Whatever comes next, Rey is probably not prepared for it, and she knows this. She cannot handle more pain. More heartbreak. More bad news.

Her heart already feels like it’s shattered, like a piece of it will forever be absent from Rey’s body now that she’s given herself so completely to Ben and had it all taken away from her.

In the privacy of Leia’s office, just off the main bridge, Rey finds herself enveloped in a long, warm hug. The comfort she gathers from Leia’s embrace is so much,  _ too much, _ and Rey feels her heart start to crumble as the sobs force their way violently from her chest. Tears fall into Leia’s shoulder and Rey clings desperately to the General’s jacket, like she’ll physically crumble as well. It feels like she will, her broken heart too much to bear.

“I’m sorry,” Rey murmurs into Leia’s jacket. She’d tried so hard to help Ben; she’d brought him back, given Leia her son back, and now he was gone again. 

Rey blamed herself.

“Oh, Rey,” Leia sighs sadly. She sniffles, and Rey can feel the soft ache of Leia’s heart as well. 

Leaning away to look at her, Rey sees that while Leia isn’t crying, the sadness in her eyes is overwhelming. “I’m so sorry,” Rey says again, dabbing the palms of her hands at her eyes and her cheeks, trying to regain at least a little bit of composure.

“Don’t be sorry,” Leia insists, resting her hands on Rey’s shoulders.

She wants to comfort Rey, to calm her, to show her that no matter what happens with Ben, Rey has still found a family in Leia, in the resistance.

“I couldn’t convince him to stay,” Rey says sadly, her lower lip quivering. 

“Rey,” Leia says again, wiping away a tear that slipped from Rey’s eyes as she spoke. “I lost my son once. I can do it again.” 

Rey’s shoulders shake and another sob falls from her lips. She looks so worn down, so defeated -  _ exhausted _ from her pursuit to help Ben remember. “You shouldn’t  _ have _ to lose him again,” Rey says. Her voice is thin, trembling as she speaks. “It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.” Rey looks at up Leia, so earnest, so full of  _ anguish _ , and says, “I’m sorry he doesn’t love me anymore.”

Leia doesn’t have words to say, doesn’t know how she could possibly console Rey. She pulls gently on her shoulders and wraps her up in another hug. “It’s going to be okay, Rey,” Leia promises. The words feel empty; Leia doesn’t know how it’ll be okay, not with the weight of the galaxy on their shoulders and Rey already crumbling from losing Ben. “I’ll always be here,” Leia adds. She pats Rey’s hair, holding her like her own child, like she’d held Ben after all the nightmares he’d had as a child. 

“Always, Rey.”

\---

Rey and Leia spend most of their afternoon in Leia’s office, Rey crying on Leia’s shoulder between moments of planning, of figuring out how to move forward with their lives. It’s confirmed by one of the men in the hangar that Kylo did, in fact, take a ship to fly to Arkanis. 

He was gone.

He’d abandoned Rey, the gap between what he knew and what he’d become finally too much for him to try to reconcile.

Rey had sad quietly against Leia’s side, trying to figure out what to do next, when she’d asked, “Can I move rooms?”

That hurt the most, but Rey knew it had to be done; the space was too big for her now. She didn’t own much, and suddenly it felt like all the ways in which she had been growing, she wasn’t any longer. Now, she was reduced to the bag of clothes she’d accumulated over the years and those Jedi texts she’d taken from Ahch-To. Nothing more.

As Rey packs up her few possessions, she looks around their quarters. At the holopad lying on the dresser that he’d left behind. At his cowl, hanging on a hook by the door. She wonders if he’s realized yet, that he’s forgotten it.

One lone box sits by the door of the only possessions Rey had accumulated. She preferred the sentimental attachments, rather than the physical. Her soaps that remind her that she can bathe now, whenever she wants. The beautiful dress she wore the day she married Ben. The flowers she’d pressed, to preserve forever the memory of their wedding, the little bouquet they’d purchased on their way to sign the papers.

And speaking of papers.

An awkward officer stands in the doorway to Rey and Ben’s old quarters, holding out a holopad to her. 

_ Official Decree of Divorce _ .

He moved fast, this Rey knew. Ben was always so straightforward with her - blunt and honest like nobody else was. Usually she loved it.

In this moment, she loathed it.

With a trembling hand, Rey signs her name where she’s told to, and that’s that.

She’s officially just Rey from Jakku again. 

A nobody.

Alone.

The rooms feel so much bigger now. Hollow and empty in a way that she doesn’t know how to comprehend. She can feel Ben’s presence everywhere, but yet he’s gone. Gone forever this time. 

Hot, fat tears roll down Rey’s cheeks as she haphazardly shoves the last of her possessions into the box. She slings her bag over her shoulder with her clothing in it, and with everything she owns there on her person, Rey leaves the rooms she’d once called home.

She walks away from the last reminder of what she and Ben shared.

Head bowed in defeat and sorrow, Rey lets the tears cascade over her cheeks as she walks the hallway to her new room. It’s small - one of the smallest - but it’ll do. It’s all she needs. 

Rey avoids the gaze of everyone around her in the hallways, pretending that it’s not pity written all over their faces. That they don’t know the anguish she feels, the sting of abandonment welling in her body like a pit about to consume her whole, right on the spot. Rey pretends that nobody knows who she is or what she’s going through because it’s the only way she’ll keep from completely falling apart.

Finn stands at the end of the hallway; Rey can sense him, knows he’s watching her.

Quietly, her hand trembling, Rey opens the door to her new room. Once inside, she closes the door behind her and ensures it’s locked. 

She wants to be alone.

The room is eerie, empty. Lonely. She may as well have little lines etched into the wall once more, counting down how long it’s been since someone abandoned her.

Maybe she should start anew. Maybe she should wait, to try to hold onto one last miniscule shred of hope that Ben will come back.

Accepting the truth had been painful enough the first time. Rey doesn’t have the strength to do it again. Ben is gone. He’d left her like she was nothing, just as her parents had done. It was time to accept it, to understand it, and to move on, not waste years of her life on it like she had the first time. 

To try to find a way to become whole once more.

But for now, Rey would cry.

She would curl into a ball on her bare, single mattress, cling to herself, and cry.

\---

Kylo tries to ignore the clenching pain in his chest that he feels as he soars through space towards Arkanis. He’s surprised by the choice of planet; it’s Hux’s home planet, and Hux wrote it off years ago as the place he no longer allied himself with - not when he could be in the Supreme Leader’s grand army. 

He always was an overly-devoted man, that General Hux.

It’s obvious that the pain in Kylo’s chest is a residual connection with Rey, that she’s heartbroken and hurting and it’s all his fault. But he couldn’t stay; he needs her to understand this. In time, he’s sure that she will. In the meantime, though, Kylo is irritated that the pain isn’t subsiding, even as the distance between the two of them grows.

As he descends through the atmosphere of Arkanis, Kylo sees the First Order shuttles all over the port. Hux is already here. 

Prepared to make this decision once and for all, Kylo walks confidently out of his own ship once it lands. He looks strong, powerful. Like a leader.

Hux’s smile is grotesque when he sees Kylo approaching.

“Ah, Kylo Ren,” Hux says. He looks so smug, and there’s a devious sparkle in his eyes that tells Kylo this is going to be no ordinary interaction. “Good to see you.” Hux glances over his shoulder. “I imagine you’re ready to go, but I do believe there is a conversation we must have before I allow you back on that ship.”

“There is no need for conversation,” Kylo says flatly. He looks boredly at Hux, though inside his head he’s calculating all the possible things Hux might say. 

“But there is,” Hux replies. He stands tall, hands clasped behind his back. “You see, the last time you were allied with us, you allowed that filthy scavenger to  _ murder _ the Supreme Leader. Your intentions are…  _ contested _ , to say the least.”

“I have given everything I have to the First Order,” Kylo reminds Hux.

Hux sneers. “As soon as you met the scavenger, you became weak,” he says simply. “Sure, you may have  _ ruthlessly _ murdered your father, and ordered the destruction of the entire Hosnian system, but every decision you have made since meeting the scavenger has ripped you apart. You’re conflicted. You’ve defected once. How are we to know you aren’t going to do it again?”

Murdered his father?

Destroyed the Hosnian system?

“Just because you are the son of a Princess does not mean that you are entitled to any power within the First Order. You abandoned us in our time of need, after the murder of the Supreme Leader,” Hux continues, his tone harsh and relentless, eyes bugging out just slightly as he speaks with such vindication. “You left. I stepped up. You will be at my mercy for the remainder of your time in the First Order. You cannot overthrow me, you cannot beat me. You are weak, and you are too attached to the women in your life.” Hux sneers at Kylo, looking across at him with his head held high, chin jutted out in a gesture of power. “Besides, you couldn’t even kill Luke Skywalker. He humiliated you in front of the entire First Order and proved that your power doesn’t make you strong. It doesn’t help you at  _ all _ .” Hux narrows his eyes. “You are  _ nothing _ . Nothing but a scared boy with too much to live up to.” A pause. Kylo feels Hux’s satisfaction, his smugness written clear as day across his face. “Now. Get on the ship. We’ll find a job for you somewhere.”

Kylo is livid, seething with rage. There’s  _ so much _ to unpack in Hux’s tirade, least of all that he’d somehow summoned the courage to murder his own father. But…

It’s as Dameron said. He has no place in the First Order. No value. No worth. Kylo’s past cannot save him, cannot earn him a place in the First Order like it once had. Snoke was the only one who understood the power coursing through his veins, what Kylo could do. How he could rise to power.

Hux saw him as damaged goods, as a weak fool who’d left once but could leave again -  _ would _ leave again - at the slightest opportunity.

Kylo was loathe to admit his lingering attachment to his mother, the woman who had remained hopeful even when she had no right to, no reason at all.

“Now,” Hux says, looking satisfied at Kylo’s silence. 

This is the position of power Hux has been fighting for.  _ This _ is the satisfaction he’d been seeking. Having control over a Jedi, someone as powerful as Kylo Ren, was exactly what Hux needed to reaffirm that he was now the most powerful man in the galaxy.

 


	10. Chapter 10

Rey spends a few days alone in her rooms, and somehow Leia lets her. She must have even asked Finn and Poe to give Rey space, because nobody comes knocking.

It is also entirely likely that nobody knows she moved rooms.

Finally, several days after Ben’s abrupt departure, Rey makes herself get up and face the day. She takes a shower in the fresher, but leaves her hair down on her shoulders, too exhausted to bother tying it up in her usual three bun style. She looks pale, a little sickly, but she’s moving and that’s step one.

She meets Finn and Poe and their other friends in the mess hall for breakfast, though she chooses not to eat, just to sip on a cup of caf blearily. Poe watches her, but doesn’t ask questions. He understands that Rey needs to process this in her own time. Besides, he’s rather disappointed as well. He’d thought maybe having a conversation with Ben, talking to him like they were friends again, might help the cause.

Finn is at Rey’s side as soon as he sees her, and in this instance, his fierce protectiveness of Rey is much needed. He sits at her side on the bench, a hand gently rubbing her back the whole time they sit there. He looks concerned, and like he’s about to burst and say ten million things, but he holds back. Finn just keeps reassuring Rey that it’ll be okay, that she’s going to get through this, that everyone on base will help her.

Softly, when there’s a break in the conversation, Rey asks the question she’s been dying to ask for years.

“Poe? Tell me about Ben. When you knew him. Please?”

Poe’s eyes are wide and brimming with surprise at her question. Finn looks to Poe curiously, and Jess and Snap are filled with the same wonderment. They’d all known, of course, that Poe and Ben had a background, but not a soul had been brave enough to ask. Until now. Until Rey.

He’s caught off guard and not expecting to open up to these people, but Poe’s nothing if not a good sport when it comes to his friends, so he nods. “Okay. Um… what do you want to know?” he asks.

“Anything,” Rey replies. Her voice is singsong, but weak. Airy in a way that says she’s trying very hard to heal herself, to move on.

“We met when I was really little,” Poe says. He runs a hand over his five o’clock shadow, the one left over from the day before that he hadn’t bothered to shave. His eyes are cast downward at his caf as he says, “I think it was when he was a baby, which is weird as hell, y’know? But his parents were friends with mine. They all fought for the Republic. Hell, I even met Luke Skywalker a few times, before he disappeared. He gave my parents the tree we had in our backyard. A Force tree or something like that. Ben was obsessed with it.”

Poe looks up at Rey and says, “He’s always been sort of an outsider. Kids made fun of him for how he looked.”

“Did you stand up for him?” Rey wonders.

With a nod, Poe says, “Yeah. From the start. We were friends before we ever started school, so like, I didn’t think there was anything weird about him.”

Rey’s eyes look misty, and her heart aches to think that Ben has felt like he never really belonged for his entire life. “So he was like your brother?”

Poe shrugs. “Sort of?” he supplies weakly. “Not right away. But… when my parents died, Leia and Han took me in. Then, yeah… he sort of  _ was _ like my brother.” Poe avoids their eyes as he turns his mug of caf in his hands. “They were so nice, after I lost my parents. All three of them. He looked out for me, even if he was younger than me.”

He leaves out the part about Ben sharing his baby blanket, and his room, and all his toys. That’s too much to share, even with Rey. It’s something Poe would rather keep to himself, one of those intimate memories not meant to be given away. For his sake, or for Ben’s.

“Were you his only friend?” Finn wonders.

Poe nods. “I don’t think that’s why he was nice to me, though,” he says. “Before all of the stuff with Luke… he was a good kid. A little different, but people only thought that because he was so quiet.”

Rey’s brow knits with sadness. “So what happened?”

“Things went to shit,” Poe says simply. “Han and Leia weren’t getting along like they used to, mostly because they couldn’t figure out exactly what to do with Ben. He was a loner, and he didn’t talk to many people, and they didn’t know how to help him with that. He wanted to train, and he was curious about Vader. And then when he started having the nightmares… that’s when things really went wrong.

“He’d tell us all the time about the dark side, about how there were ways to use it for good and that if he could just start training, he’d be able to fix everything. If he trained with the dark side he could protect the light,” Poe rambles. He shakes his head; it’s all so long ago and he can’t remember the fine-tuned details. “It freaked the fuck out of Han so he went back to smuggling, and Leia’s solution was to send Ben to train at Luke’s academy.”

“It was Snoke,” Rey says softly. “Putting those ideas in his head.”

Poe nods. He looks gravely at Rey and says, “Ben meant well. He wanted to  _ fix  _ things. He thought that if he could be like Luke, maybe his parents would like him more. Because he’d remind them of someone they already liked.” Poe sighs. “Luke had been teaching him some stuff unofficially, anyway, so he was halfway to being a Jedi knight by the time they sent him away.” With a sad smile, Poe says, “He even taught me to fight before he left.”

Rey smiles at that; it sounds like something Ben would do. If only so he wouldn’t have to train him later, when he knew he wouldn’t have the patience for such basic things anymore.

“But… yeah, that’s all, really,” Poe says. “We were close as kids, and then we grew apart. Happens all the time.”

His stories did so much for Rey, though. They made her heart well with hope - not for Ben to come back to her, per se, but that he’d find some purpose, some light to which he could return. That maybe he wasn’t entirely lost, maybe he never would be.

“Thank you,” Rey says to Poe, that saddened smile playing on her lips again.

Poe nods. 

He wishes he could do more for Rey, to lift her spirits.

Hell, he wishes he could bring Ben back. Not just for her now, but for himself as well.

\---

When Rey wakes the next morning, everything feels different. 

Blinking her eyes open, she feels his presence, but knows better than to get her hopes up and expect to find him on base. He’d been very secure in his decision to leave. There was no possible way he was back. This was all just Rey’s brain playing tricks on her, the Force playing with them like puppets once more.

In an effort to push the feeling away, Rey delved back into work, immersing herself in the circuits and wires that made so much sense in her brain. She works with practiced ease, her calloused hands brushing streaks of grease on her tools, her arms, her jumpsuit. Rey is determined to do whatever it takes to ignore that weird feeling in the back of her head that Ben is around somewhere.

He’s not.

Finn and Poe join her midday, trying to convince her to go eat something. It doesn’t work. Rey returns to tweaking something on a ship that Finn’s going to use on a mission in a few short days. She wants everything to be in the best condition possible so he doesn’t have to worry about anything but completing his mission.

Rey gets so caught up in her work, her head, that she doesn’t hear someone approaching. She has no idea Ben stands in the hangar behind her, Finn and Poe forming a sort of protective gate between him and Rey.

“Rey.”

His voice is low and booming, and it echoes in the hangar.

Eyes wide, Rey turns slowly. It must be her brain playing tricks on her - right?

It’s him, standing head to toe in his only outfit he’d kept from when he resided with the First Order. Trousers, tunic, gloves, cowl - it was all there. His hair was a mess but his eyes looked desperate, innocent,  _ pained _ .

Rey climbs down the ladder and walks towards him, but when she gets closer, she realizes there’s also  _ anger _ on his face.

Something is wrong.

“Did you know I killed my father? That I tried to kill Luke?”

His words cut like knives through the tension in the hangar, each one sending daggers through Rey’s heart. He’s angry,  _ livid _ , in a way that frightens her a little. When he’s this angry, Ben is volatile, and he could hurt anyone and anything around him, the anger completely consuming him.

She’d known that withholding that information from him would come back to hurt her, to hurt  _ him _ . She knew it was a mistake and he shouldn’t do a thing like that. That she should have been honest. But still she’d done it, to try to preserve some of that innocence he still held after the accident. There was less turmoil in his soul because of it.

What’s worse is she can  _ feel _ his anguish through the force. It permeates her entire body, almost as though he’s projecting the ache onto her. It pushes tears to her eyes, though admittedly, she’s always near tears these days. Breathlessly, through all the pain, Rey nods and gasps, “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Finn and Poe still stand protectively between them, but it’s not worth it. Rey and Ben speak as though the other two weren’t even in the room. Rey looks right past them, forcing herself to feel all the pain Ben feels - the confusion and anger at why Rey kept something so important from him.

“I’m sorry,” Rey shakes her head. “I wanted to. But… I watched what you did drive you so deep into that place of darkness the first time,” Rey says. “It broke my heart to think about putting you through that again.”

“But I didn’t remember the first time!” he shouts.

“But I did!” Rey shouts back. She blinks tears down her cheeks and shakes her head. “It was wrong of me to keep it from you. I know that.” Her gaze is unwavering as she admits, “I’d just hoped that by not knowing those things… maybe it could help you. I’ve only ever wanted for you to find peace. You  _ deserve _ to find peace.”

“It wasn’t your place,” Ben seethes.

“I know,” nods Rey. She blinks, more tears cascading down her cheeks. Ben’s own eyes look glassy and Rey knows that she’s really, truly screwed up now. “I know, and I’m so sorry.”

“Why’d you come back?” Poe asks suddenly.

Ben swallows and looks over in surprise, as though he hadn’t realized they were in the room. “The First Order doesn’t need me,” says Ben simply.

His gaze turns back to Rey and he warns, “Don’t follow me. I want to be alone.”

Tearfully, Rey watches as Ben walks out of the hangar. She blinks, more tears slipping from her eyes, but she doesn’t run away. She doesn’t hide or accept the comfort Finn is offering her. Rey just brushes off Finn’s advances and turns back to her work.

She’d deserved that. It wasn’t right of her to withhold such important information from him.

Besides, even if he didn’t want  _ her,  _ she felt a flicker of hope because he’d still come back. That was something.

That was step one.

\---

A droid comes to Rey’s quarters the next day, asking after the Jedi texts she’s taken with her from Ahch-To. Rey is hesitant to part with them, but the droid rather easily divulges the fact that Ben Solo was asking for them so he could train.

That changes things.

Rey parts with the texts, confident that there is nothing in the pages left for her to learn. At this point, everything she can glean from them, she has, mostly thanks to C-3PO. She hopes that Ben finds solace and peace with the Resistance, or finds a way to build a new home for himself somewhere remote, somewhere he feels comfortable.

While thinking of him may make her heart ache, she takes a deep and profound comfort in knowing that he didn’t stay with the First Order. That he walked away once again - not for her, this time, or perhaps even for his mother - but for himself. He’d seen that he didn’t belong to the dark side, and he accepted it.

Ben finds it easy to acclimate to life with the Resistance after a short conversation with his mother. She hadn’t asked him much, aside from the terms with which he’d separated himself from the First Order.

“It’s simple,” he’d said to her. “If I go back, the entire First Order army has orders to kill on sight.” Ben looked at his mother, eyes expressionless. “I’m not going to fight for the Resistance. I just need somewhere to stay while I figure out what’s next.”

Leia, just grateful to have her son back if even just for a few days, had nodded. “Of course,” she’d said. “Stay as long as you need.”

So now Ben had his own room, somewhere in the central area of the base, near his mother’s quarters, but far enough that nobody would connect the dots and assume he’d asked for her protection. More than anything, Ben just wanted to be sure that he could focus on his next steps without constantly running into Rey, Finn, or Poe - or anyone who knew him, really.

Most days he spent either in the training facility or his quarters. His bed was a little small, but he’d found a space to squeeze in a chair and a desk, so he sat at the table studying the ancient Jedi texts to try to gain some knowledge that he’d lost.

It’s just another day, nothing extraordinary, when Ben wakes and prepares for the day. He rifles around his small room looking for something to wear. He’d disposed of his First Order uniform immediately, and promptly bought out all the black clothing from the small supply shop on base. His mother had ordered more, but until it got there, he had limited options.

And dammit, he wanted his black sweater.

When he opens one of the boxes Rey had packed up for him, of his last few belongings he’d left around their shared quarters, Ben finds some paper shoved down in the corner of the box. Of course, that damn sweater is nowhere in sight. But the paper caught his eye because… he doesn’t see paper much anymore. Everything’s digital.

He’d had a calligraphy set as a child; he’d found a certain solace in the way people used to hand-craft letters and stories, put time and effort into putting words on a page. Now, it was all symbols flashing across a screen. He’d loved writing out the words by hand, pouring emotion and energy into the flow of his pen across the paper.

Reaching out to touch the paper sends a shiver down Ben’s spine and he senses that there’s something unusual about this paper. As he turns it over, he begins to see the familiar, swooping handwriting he’d spent years trying to perfect. Bringing it closer, into the light streaming into his room, Ben studies the words closely. He’d written this in Basic, and he’d poured so much emotion into this. He could  _ feel it _ emanating from the page. 

_ Rey, _

_ Words fail me, more often than not, whenever I’m around you. You suffered for so long, and yet you still have a smile on your face every day. You press on like nothing bad ever happened to you. _

_ You make me want to do the same. _

_ Before you, my life felt worthless. I was nothing, and I had no true purpose. I was a pawn in someone else’s game. When we first met, I knew you were different, but didn’t yet know how. _

_ The moment our hands touched, I saw our full potential - you and me, together. I knew that if I made the right decisions, we could change the galaxy and fix all the things that have gone wrong. We could save what was left. _

_ But that’s not what matters most to me, anymore. I wouldn’t care if the rest of the galaxy completely disappeared because you are what gives my life purpose and meaning. You have shown me that a man can change his stars and find his way back to where he belongs.  _

_ You, Rey from Jakku, have given me hope. _

_ I know right now I will never say it enough, or show you enough, but I want you to know this: I love you. I never knew a love like this was even possible until I met you, but it is. I love you, Rey. And I will never, ever leave your side. _

_ You never have to be lonely again. _

_ I promise you. _

Ben’s hands tremble as he looks down at the paper in his hands. His chest constricts and his breathing grows labored as he realizes -  _ these were his wedding vows _ . Nobody even has to tell him - he can feel it in his bones. Why else would he write such a thing?

The emotions he’d felt for this woman, the things she made him feel… it’s something Ben cannot wrap his head around. He’d come back for a reason, but was this it? Was Rey calling to him, even when she felt like a stranger to him? 

He can’t make sense of it, doesn’t know where to begin to even  _ think _ about this. But now there’s proof right in front of him. 

This is how Rey had once made him feel.

This was the love they’d shared.

Ben pockets the piece of paper and grabs the old shirt off the dresser, the one he’d worn after the accident that Rey said she’d gotten for him. It’s still one of the only things he feels comfortable in aside from the sweater he’d been searching for. He shuffles into the shirt, mussing up his hair in his rush.

With swift determination, Ben stomps through the hallways of the Resistance base, on a mission to find Rey. He hadn’t spoken to her in a full week - had wanted her to understand just how badly her omissions had hurt him - but now it felt like he’d waited too long. Ben felt a lingering fear deep in his gut that he’d let her get away. That by pushing her away for so long, for being hot and cold and not sure about his feelings, that he’d caused Rey to push him away for good.

Ben is so determined to find Rey, so singular in his focus, that he nearly knocks someone over as he turns the corner towards the mess hall.

Poe Dameron.

“Ben, you’re back,” Poe starts. His brow is furrowed up in confusion and he brushes a hand over his five o’clock shadow, studying Ben curiously. “What -?”

“Where’s Rey?”

Poe drops his hand to cross both arms in front of his chest. His gaze becomes much harder, more determined, as he asks, “Why do you want to know?”

“She’s -”

“Not your wife anymore,” Poe finishes for him. “You divorced her, remember? You up and left her and then served her with divorce papers all in the course of  _ one day _ . You broke her damn heart.”

Ben purses his lips, his cheeks puffing out just the slightest. Poe remembers that look as an expression Han Solo often wore when telling Poe not to get into so many fights, not to be so reckless on the playground, or up in the sky. Seeing the resemblance makes Poe soften towards Ben just a very, tiny little bit.

“Look -,” Poe continues. “I don’t know where she is, honestly. She kind of secluded herself after you left. She works in the hangar a lot, but I haven’t seen her there today. Maybe she’s finally getting some sleep, I don’t know.”

“Finally?”

Poe looks up at Ben, something akin to pity on his face. “Yeah, finally,” Poe nods. He’s not going to tiptoe around this, to protect Ben. He should know what he’s putting Rey through. “She doesn’t sleep much anymore. She fights like hell, too. Chewie won’t let her near the cockpit of the Falcon when she’s like this, even.”

Ben’s shoulders slump.

“You really hurt her,” Poe says simply. He keeps his arms crossed, but stands a little straighter. He knows he’s gained the upper hand in this conversation. “You hurt all of us, if I’m being totally honest. Your mom may be used to this run-around, but we’re not. Rey especially. You know about her past and what her parents did to her. And yet you still left like she was nothing.”

“She’s not  _ nothing _ .”

“Yeah, well, you made her feel like she  _ was _ ,” Poe says. “So the question now is  _ what are you gonna do about it _ ?”

Ben stares blankly at Poe. 

“You weren’t just gonna run through the base until you found her and then just expect her to take you back, were you?” Poe asks. His gaze is critical, and Ben can feel the frustration emanating from the man. Worse than that, though, is his disappointment.

Everyone in the Resistance seems to be disappointed with him these days.

“Hey Poe? Where’d you -  _ oh _ .”

Finn rounds the corner at that exact moment, freezing in his tracks when he sees Poe and Ben talking. “Do you guys want me to like…?” Finn trails off, gesturing over his shoulder.

“No, you can stay,” says Poe. Poe looks from Finn to Ben. “Ben and I were just talking about how he’s going to try to apologize to Rey and tell her that he’s been a complete  _ tool _ .”

Ben rolls his eyes.

“You don’t want to make me any angrier than you already have, Solo,” Poe warns him, though something in his expression says he’s trying to make a joke. Ben isn’t having it, and takes this moment to cross his own arms defensively. “I have a lot of embarrassing stories about you I could share if I wanted to. Be grateful I haven’t yet.”

Ben rolls his eyes.

“So, do you remember?” Finn asks, sounding almost hopeful.

“Would I be looking at you like this if I  _ did _ ?” Ben asks scathingly.

Finn frowns. 

“Look, let’s not turn this into a battle. He’s trying,” Poe says to Finn. “Even if he has  _ no plan _ .”

“I don’t need a plan.”

Finn and Poe both chortle. They know full well that he’s going to need a plan if he has any intention whatsoever of getting Rey back. She’s written him off once and for all, insisted that she doesn’t need him anymore, that she’s going to be able to move on with her life. 

Even if she still cries herself to sleep every night.

“You basically need to grovel,” Finn says simply. “What you’ve done to her is crap. Rey is the best thing to happen to this  _ galaxy _ , and you’re the only person I’ve ever met who’s been so willing to toss her aside like she’s nothing.”

Ben doesn’t move.

“What Finn I  _ trying to say _ ,” Poe chimes in, sensing some tension growing in the air, “is that you just have to have a plan. You need to know what you’re going to say.” He looks at Ben, locks eyes with him purposefully, before he says, “You need to tell her you’re sorry. You need to be more apologetic than you’ve ever been in your life.”

“And maybe don’t tell her you love her yet,” Finn suggests. “After all the back and forth, it may be better to ease into that.”

Poe glances at Finn curiously. “You sure about that?” he asks. “I think she needs to hear it.”

Ben huffs, pulling their attention back to him. “I just need to find her. I need to see if she’ll even  _ talk to me _ ,” he says. “It doesn’t matter what I do after that.”

Poe nods, looking at Ben through narrowed eyes. He still doesn’t fully trust this guy, but he also knows that there’s nothing he can do to stop Ben from doing or taking whatever he wants. He’s never listened to rules, not when Poe was enforcing them, anyway. And he certainly wasn’t going to listen to Finn.

“Just…” Finn trails off.

“Treat her well,” Poe finishes for him. Finn nods in agreement, standing quietly by his side. “She’s been hurt a lot these past few weeks. Rey’s strong, but I don’t know how much more she can handle.”

The seriousness in both men’s eyes is all the warning Ben needs. He nods, and turns to walk down the corridor. He  _ needs _ to find Rey.

He may not remember, but reading those vows was the push he needed to really consider why he’d fallen in love with her the first time. It made him want to try to see that light again, to find what it was that he’d fallen in love with the first time. 

The promises he’d made to Rey… those were broken now. He knew that, in a way, Rey understood. There was only so much they could do to prevent the injuries he’d sustained. And yet, he’d resisted when he should have listened. He’d pushed her away and broken her heart again and again, and yet Rey still kept coming back to him.

That should have been all the proof he’d needed.

Nobody else, save for perhaps his mother, would have tried so hard to bring him back, to keep him from making the same poor mistakes over again. And as loathe as he was to admit it, part of Ben was grateful that Rey had wanted to protect him from himself by not telling him about his father.

He hadn’t been able to shake the broken feeling in his chest, knowing what he’d done to his own father. It was unimaginable. Even under Snoke’s guidance, Ben couldn’t comprehend how he would actually follow through with such a task.

It made him sick to think about.

As Ben walks the hallways of the Resistance base, he gets lost in his thoughts, trying to formulate a plan, a sentence,  _ something _ to say to Rey when he finds her. He stops in his tracks when something thuds painfully against his leg.

Looking down, Ben sees the droid. The orange and yellow one that usually trails Dameron around. It’s persistently slamming into his leg to get his attention. “What?” he asks the droid tersely.

_ [Footage of Friend Ben and Friend Rey!] _ beeps the droid.  _ [Would Friend Ben like to view now?] _

Deciding that it might give him a better idea of how on earth to talk to Rey, Ben nods. He follows the droid as it beeps happily and whirrs down the hallway.

He’s never trusted droids much, but this one… this one’s okay.

\---

The following morning, Ben finally taps into the Force enough to sense Rey through it. Her power is surging, at its peak, and it pulls him to her. It’s a subconscious action on her part, he’s sure, but he follows it nonetheless. He really wants to see her -  _ needs _ to see her - to try to make amends, to fix what he’s done.

And now, having watched all that footage found by BB-8, Ben feels a little more prepared to approach Rey and have a conversation with her. He doesn’t remember, but he can try. Harder.

She’s in the training room -  _ their _ training room - and Ben knocks before he walks in. Rey stands in the center, her staff in her hands and sweat glistening on her skin. Her hair is back in three buns, like usual, and her tunic sticks to her damp skin. She looks gorgeous, but tense. Like she’s trying to fight off all the emotions threatening to consume her while still holding out hope that he’ll return to her.

When her eyes find his, Rey’s whole expression falls. She tosses her staff to the side and doesn’t say a word. The clattering sound echoes in the training room, causing Ben to flinch just a little.

Her eyes are dark, sad. He can feel her heartbreak consuming him in the room. She doesn’t look at him the way she once had, full of hope that maybe this time, he’d remember her, what they had. Now Rey just looks at him with an abject sadness that makes Ben ache. 

Instead of stopping to talk to him, Rey sighs and begins to walk towards the door. She looks away from him, because she knows that if she glances up, she’s going to stop. And she doesn’t want to talk to Ben, not anymore. He’d made it very clear that they were over.

He’d  _ divorced _ her, and had broken her heart.

In an instant, Rey is suddenly frozen in place, the feeling of a million tight bindings on her body keeping her from moving. She tries, but she can’t go anywhere. When Rey blinks her eyes open, she sees Ben’s outstretched hand, sees the determination on his face.

He’d used the Force to stop her from walking away from him. 

_ He’d used the Force to stop her _ .

Rey bursts into tears immediately, memories flooding back to her of the very first time she’d ever been in his presence, known what it felt like to be near Ben. She’d been so scared then, but of what? The man who ended up loving her so completely? The man who stole her heart just by letting his walls down and trusting her, being vulnerable with her, sharing a side of him that nobody else got to see?

It felt so stupid.

So, so stupid.

Rey laughed through her tears, a pitter-patter of hope mending the shattered pieces of her heart in her chest. She doesn’t even want him to let go, because this memory… whether he knows she has it or not… it makes Rey feel hopeful all over again that maybe he’s not totally lost. 

But it also scares her, because it means she could go right back into his arms and be hurt all over again.

“Rey,” he begins.

She sniffles, another sob escaping her lips, but her eyes are dancing with happiness. Ben doesn’t understand.

“I am so sorry. For everything.”

Very slowly, scared that he might spook Rey even though she cannot move, Ben takes a step closer to her. And then another. 

“I should have trusted you,” he continues. He watches her closely, steps a little closer. He could touch her now, if he wanted. “I don’t remember what we had. I probably never will.”

Rey allows another sob to pass from her lips and she trembles just a little, the sweat on her body now making her feel chilled, in combination with the mystery of not knowing where the conversation is going to go. She’s nervous, excited,  _ terrified _ that she’ll be hurt again. Not physically, but emotionally. That this will be the last time they ever speak.

“I found the vows I wrote for you,” Ben says simply. “You packed them in one of my boxes, didn’t you?” Rey would nod, if she could move. Ben wishes she would speak, but she doesn’t. “I don’t know how we got to that point. I can’t fathom how I let another person in like that.” Ben steps closer, lowering his hand. Rey feels the tightness around her limbs loosening. She can move.

She doesn’t want to, though.

Ben lets the words settle over them, gives Rey the chance to speak, if she wants to. The silence in the room is deafening, painful almost. He pleads with her to say something, but she’s quiet. Rey has said all she can; she’s exhausted. It’s Ben’s turn to do the talking.

“I came back to find out why I left the First Order,” he says finally. “And I understand you are a big part of that.”

Rey swallows past a lump in her throat and wills herself not to get her hopes up. Just because he’s here, being civil, doesn’t mean he’s going to want her back. Rey’s guard is up, and she’s not going to let herself get hurt again. 

In response to his statement, Rey nods.

“Thank you for not giving up on me,” Ben says, tilting his head and gazing deeply into Rey’s eyes. She feels his words in her bones, knows down to the very depths of herself that he’s telling the truth. “Thank you for fighting for me.”

Rey sniffles, another sob shaking her shoulders even as a smile begins to show upon her lips.

“I don’t remember, and I’m not sure I ever will, but… I’d like to try again.” He swallows. “I want to know who you are, and why you kept me here when you have all these people to choose from.” He glances over his shoulder towards the door - on the other side of which the entire Resistance is housed. 

Ben holds out his hand to her - bare and trembling, palm a little sweaty. But it’s a gesture, one he’s learned from BB-8 as one that means a lot to Rey. “Will you come watch a holovid with me?” he asks.

Rey snorts. For how romantic and sweeping his speech had begun, the ending is abrupt, a bit stupid. But yet Rey wouldn’t expect anything less from Ben. He’d once tried to ask her to join him by telling her she was  _ nothing _ . It was a sweeping romantic gesture, in its own way, just as this was now.

And then a thought strikes her.

She never once told him, after the accident, that she liked watching holovids. Rey quirks an eyebrow. “You remember that?” she asks.

Ben shakes his head. Rey dabs at the tears on her cheeks as she asks, “Then how…?”

Ben looks at Rey, mischief sparkling in his eyes and the gentlest trace of a smile edging upon his lips. “BB-8 found more footage of us,” he explains. “The droid has been showing them to me, and telling me things about you. He says you like holovids, especially with me.”

“I’ll watch them with anyone,” Rey says, though it’s halfway a lie. She’s only ever watched them with Ben, she doesn’t know if she likes them specifically because of him. She smirks at him.

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks, holding out his hand to her just a little further.

Rey knows in the back of her mind that she could get hurt again - it’s entirely likely, especially given his memory loss - but she’d been begging to have him back. And even if his memories haven’t returned, Ben has.

He’s standing in front of her, offering his hand, asking for another chance. He’s learning to find his way in the galaxy once again, and he’s chosen to have Rey at his side. In what capacity, she doesn’t yet know. And perhaps she doesn’t really mind. He’s back, and he’s apologized, and he’s  _ trying _ .

This time, without hesitation, Rey reaches out and rests her hand in Ben’s. She threads their fingers together and squeezes gently, willing his trembling to stop. 

She is his, without reservation, without hesitation, for as long as he’ll have her.

On and off, ebbing and flowing… their relationship is about balance.

She had to learn to let go of who she remembered, to reach him as he is now. Ben had to let go of what he knew and trust in what he’d become. 

And now here they were, hand in hand, starting over.

It would be better this time.

Everything would be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Come say hello at reyssolo.tumblr.com !


End file.
